PLEASE: Sign the petition to enforce federal laws concerning partition safety! Click the link below the image labeled "Partition Safety Petition". The search bar is at the top of the side menu.
GoFundMe site for Partition Safety
Click here to read and sign petition
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Met with the Massachusetts RMV officials
Met with the Massachusetts RMV officials this morning. They had a bunch of reasons to continue to approve illegal partitions. They said go to the USDOT NHTSA (who told me to see the state), or go to the taxi regulators (who can't get their heads out of their asses). One official joked and smiled about officers slamming on the brakes to injure prisoners in cruisers. Sick and sad.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Reply to Vincent letter
Dear
Mr. Vincent,
First, I thank you for taking the
time to respond to my October letter on January 11th, this year.
Allow me to submit the following perspectives and data.
“Security” partition may be a misnomer.
Partitions installed in taxis (to reduce murders)
have had a miserable failure rate. Every cab driver killed in Boston since 1970 HAD a partition in the cab.
More drivers get shot now, with partitions.
Although this aspect is not a DOT issue, I offer
the “1997 Baltimore report From NCSU’s urban studies professor Dr. John
Randolph Stone, which says; “One of the most intuitively effective, yet
controversial countermeasures is a taxi partition or shield.”
“Intuitively effective”? What does this mean?
“We think it works, so let’s assume it does.”?
Dr. Stone supports taxi regulators who overstate
the objective of taxi partition use. He also says; “This study makes one
implicit assumption… it is assumed that assaults on taxi drivers are a proxy
measure of taxi driver homicides. Thus, if shields reduce assaults then it can
be assumed that they will reduce homicides.”
You have no need to pay attention to his data
which shows a 300% increase in cab driver murders. If… partitions are viable,
or not, for murder rate reductions… is not a question your office would deal
with. Your office would only deal with compliance issues, and performance
issues in crashes, not assaults.
Regarding paragraph four; I only request that
the agency do… as required by congressional directive. In order to reduce the
frequency and severity of injury and the frequency of death, your agency should
make it clear that partitions, IF USED, must be built and installed in compliance
with all applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards.
Currently none
are certified, and none comply. Regarding the merits of using a partition; you mention a trade off of safety in the
absence of a partition. A previous USDOT
letter (from Armstrong) mentioned a trade off of safety using a partition.
“Trading off safety” with a partition is illegal and cited in the original letter of
warning in 1984.
Trading off safety by not using a partition is not your concern. There are no federal
standards regarding operator retention of control, nor are there any regarding
assaults on operators. Just what partitions may, or may not be viable for… is
none of your business. If taxi regulators are telling the truth about assault
prevention, or not… should not be up for discussion with USDOT
personnel. Your job is to be sure partitions comply. Trading off safety by
using an illegal partition is your concern. Any so-called trade-off of safety
from assailants, from ‘not using a partition’ should not concern you.
I thank you for the information about FMVSS 226.
Reading it cleared up my confusion about the ‘airbag/partition intrusion zone
conflict’ question. If there are other standards that mention partitions,
please let me know.
Do I understand correctly that because FMVSS no.
226 excludes partitioned vehicles, that Mr. Reid was correct when he said cabs
and cruisers are exempt from all FMVSS’s? The confusion persists.
That partitions are built, offered for sale,
sold or installed in violation of FMVSS’s, is your concern. Even if no injuries resulted, the law should be
enforced anyway. Unfortunately, many deaths and injuries do occur. So many so,
that NYC trauma surgeons were alarmed enough to conduct two studies.
Dr. Talmor, Dr. Barie, Dr.
Shapiro and Dr. Hoffman, Department of Surgery, New York Hospital-Cornell
Medical Center, NY. In 1996 four surgeons from the Department of Surgery, New
York Hospital-Cornell
“Craniofacial injuries resulting from taxicab accidents in
Taxicab accidents are a common occurrence in
Data were collected on 16 patients
who required admission to trauma or plastic and reconstructive surgery
services, after sustaining craniofacial injury as a result of a taxicab
accidents.
Front-end deceleration collisions
were the most common mechanism of injury.
Fifty-six percent of the patients were
thrown against the bulletproof, Plexiglas driver safety divider and sustained
an injury most commonly to the anterior midface.
Both bony and soft tissue injuries
were common in the entire group.
“Given the high incidence of
craniofacial injury, appropriate safety standards for taxicabs must be
initiated, including the reevaluation of the utility of the safety divider”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8722975
Another group also studied this
matter.
Dr. Arnold Komisar, Dr.
Stanley Blaugrund and Dr. Martin Camins - Lenox
Hill Hospital ,
NYC - "Every emergency room in New
York is seeing patients injured in taxicabs: three
here, four there, six at another hospital, so it's easy to underestimate the
problem,"
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/16/news/unplanned-taxi-destination-hospital.html
Some other doctors have made independent
comments about partitions.
Dr. John
Sherman - Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery, New York Hospital , New York
City - "The results are uniformly disastrous: patients with head
wounds from dividers, fractured noses, lacerations and worse. Last month
I saw two patients die from taxi-related injuries.” http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/14/opinion/l-we-need-protection-from-perilous-taxis-770395.html
I have spoken with Dr. Sherman more than once. He is exasperated and has stopped his efforts to correct the problem. He accepts the partition risks as part of life in NYC.
Dr. Marc Melrose - Emergency Physician,Beth
Israel Medical
Center , Manhattan - "Cabs don't have to get into
an accident for people to be hurt. The cab stops short and you go flying into
the screen with the handles and bolts and that metal change thing. It's
dangerous." http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/16/news/unplanned-taxi-destination-hospital.html
I have spoken with Dr. Sherman more than once. He is exasperated and has stopped his efforts to correct the problem. He accepts the partition risks as part of life in NYC.
Dr. Marc Melrose - Emergency Physician,
Dr. Rahul
Sharma, NYUMC - has worked in several city emergency rooms, is all too
familiar with the damage the anti-crime partitions, required since 1994,
can cause. “Ask any ER doc in Manhattan ,
and they will tell you they see it very frequently,” he said. “People have a
false sense of security in the backseat of a cab.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/riding-new-york-city-taxi-seat-belt-danger-health-article-1.1036853
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/riding-new-york-city-taxi-seat-belt-danger-health-article-1.1036853
Dr. Sharma has been working with Dr. Goldfrank and they are pursuing legislation to make people use seat belts in the rear seats of taxi cabs. I pointed out that correction of the violations of federal motor vehicle safety standards would solve the injury problem for BOTH front and rear seat occupants.
Dr. Stephen Pearlman -
Dr. Paul Lorenc – NYC Plastic Surgeon “Crushed noses, fractured cheekbones and eye sockets, and "stellate," or burst lacerations, are among the most common injuries suffered when a passenger is hurled into the clear partition.”
Dr. Geoffrey Doughlin - E.R.
Director, Jamaica Hospital – ‘Since the partitions act as a second windshield,
back seat passengers fall victim to the same type of injuries as people in the
front passenger position, the "suicide seat," ‘
Dr. Gary Sbordone – Massachusetts Chiropracter - “Could cause complex spinal injuries.”
Dr. Sbordone treated my spine injury from a partition in a rear end collision.
Dr. Kai Sturmann - Acting
Chairman, Emergency Department, Beth Israel - “I would like to see
back-seat air bags.”
Clearly,
there is a problem with partitions in taxis.
There are problems in cruisers also. Those
losses are difficult to document, but I have solicited a number of comments
from officers who have boasted that they can use the partition to injure
people. Here is one.
Tim Ray - a police officer of Monee , Illinois
- wrote the following message to me on the internet. This message was available
for anybody in the world to read.
"HERE'S SOMETHING I LIKE TO
DO… WHEN YOU GET AN UNFRIENDLY PASSENGER IN YOUR CAR, WHO LIKES TO RUN HIS
MOUTH, PUT HIM ON THE PASSENGER SIDE WHERE THE WIRE SCREEN IS, AND WHILE HE IS
RUNNING HIS MOUTH, TELL HIM THAT YOU CAN'T HEAR HIM, SO HE GETS RIGHT UP TO IT,
AND WHEN HIS FACE GETS RIGHT THERE. SLAM ON YOUR BRAKES, I GUARANTEE IT SHUTS
THEM UP EVERY TIME. "
Officer Ray is describing a cowardly, vicious felony, which can be fairly
characterized as nationwide, institutionalized police brutality.
The sword cuts both ways. Officers are injured by partition grids also.
This steel grid is deformed by head impact from a front passenger seat
occupant.
Straight
lines show the deviation of the steel grid.
As a manufacturer of federally
compliant partitions it would be absurd of me to campaign against the use of all
partitions. I have never asked that all partitions be removed, just those that
don’t comply and those that aren’t certified to comply. Beyond that, I’d like
to see mandates for all partitions in taxis lifted. Use of a taxi partition
should be a choice for the taxi driver to make. But that is not a DOT matter.
If you are leaving enforcement to the cities
and/or states, please explain their obligations under federal law, pertaining
to setting standards that are lower than the federal standards.
Thank
you,
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Vincent letter Jan 2013
USDOT NHTSA
Jan 11, 2013
Dear Mr. Crowell,
This responds to your letters to Administrator David
Strickland, former Deputy Administrator Ronald Medford, and several other
officials of the National Highway Traffic Sfatey Administration (NHTSA), which
we received in October of 1012. Your letters have been referred to my office
for reply. You ask for help “correcting the violations found in automobile
interior partition performance” in police cruisers, limousines, utility vans
and taxicabs. The partitions separate the front seat occupants (particularly
the driver) from back seat passengers, primarily for security reasons. I will
refer to these as “security partitions.”
From the enclosures that you sent, I understand that you
believe that security partition can cause harm to drivers and passengers and
should not be installed in vehicles. You have written NHTSA on a number of
occasions since 1984 asking about the application of NHTSA regulations to
security partitions. Several offices of the agency have responded over the years,
including this office. On September 13th 1985, then Chief Counsel
Jeffrey R. Miller sent you a latter explaining how the agencies requirements
apply to security partitions.[1]
You state in a recent letter that NHTSA has been
inconsistent in responding to you and that you believe that a may 2nd,
2012 letter from the Office of Defects Investigation contradicts earlier agency
letters to you about security partitions. The 2012 letter highly focused on
answering your inquiry from the point of view of the defects investigators. The
1985 letter to you from the Chief Counsels’ office should serve to provide an
overall view of our requirements as applied to security partitions.[2] In
that letter we noted that Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 205
applies to such partitions. Since that letter we have issued various FMVSS’s,
including FMVSS No. 226 (Ejection Mitigatiion), which specifically excludes
certain vehicles that have such partitions, including the types of vehicles you
mention. We regret if our letters have caused any confusion.
In your current letters, and judging from your past letters
to NHTSA on this subject, it appears that you would like the agency to test and
possible remove the security partitions in the vehicles listed above. As to the
merits of the security partitions now in place, we were unable to verify your
letter’s references to the harm caused by security partitions. You are welcome
to submit any actual data you have supporting your claims. On the other hand, we acknowledge that
security partitions have a place in protecting the vehicle operator from
assailants. After considering the available information, including the possible
trade-offs to the safety and security of the operator in the absence of a
security partition, we regret to inform you that testing security partitions that
are now in taxicabs and police vehicles is not an initiative the agency will
pursue at this time.
In your letter, you ask a question about the New York City
Taxi and Limousines Commission’s (TLC’s) “Taxi of Tomorrow” program. We suggest
that you contact the TLC directly for information about the test program.
Sincerely,
O. Kevin Vincent
Chief Counsel
[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/138Q-QaZN1StPGYEQaokh0ZWTA574NN9iBFP6zRTnVBI/edit
[2] In a
September 19th 2005 letter to you from this office, we note that the
1985 letter to you has not substantively changed. We explain that the “Render
Inoperative” provision in the letter was recodified at 49 U.S.C S30122, but no
substantive change was made to the provision.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)