I believe that some in the advocacy community are overlooking that the most obvious way to reduce injuries is to buckle up. The vehicle can only do so much. At a certain point, people have to do their part.

[Allowing states to enforce their own standards would lead to a confusing patchwork of requirements, NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said. Tyson added that a recent Supreme Court decision on a lawsuit exonerating Honda Motor Co. from liability in an air bag case made clear NHTSA has the authority to pre-empt state measures.] Congress has given us the authority to set safety standards, ... We're merely restating our authority. We're the agency that sets standards. Our standards are not minimum standards.

The roof crush standard is a proposal and we'll certainly take all comments into account when we write the final regulation.

And it just doesn't make sense that if we are setting standards to have a court say that a manufacturer who meets those standards is building a dangerous vehicle.

We commend Ford for stepping up, being very cooperative and voluntarily recalling these vehicles, ... Our investigation is ongoing, and we intend to keep it open because we want to find the root cause of the failure and make sure that we've identified the totality of the problem.

first step in a defect investigation.