Carmakers cope with conflicting safety rules

A crash test on a 2007 Ford Edge. Ford must reconcile European and US safety standards before bringing its vehicles to new markets. (Insurance Institute for highway Safety via Associated Press)

DEARBORN, Mich. - It seems like an easy solution: Americans are looking for more fuel-efficient vehicles, so Ford Motor Co. is bringing over some of the small, gas-sipping cars it's been selling to Europeans for years.

But introducing the cars to the US market isn't as simple as changing the speedometer from kilometers to miles. Ford has to reconcile US and European safety regulations - everything from the color of rear turn signals to the positioning of crash test dummies. And that will keep the cars from hitting US highways anytime soon.

The competing interests of automakers, governments, and the insurance industry are hampering efforts to standardize safety requirements worldwide. That means extra engineering to make different versions of vehicles for different markets.

"Each party negotiating this has their own views about their own standards being better," said Ronald Medford, senior associate administrator of vehicle safety at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets US standards. "But as long as we can show we're not lowering safety and we're lowering cost, we're all interested in that."

Some differences are significant, like the US rule that requires protection for passengers not wearing seat belts, which has no European equivalent. Others are small, like the US requirement that vehicles have side lights, which are optional in Europe.

Ford isn't the only automaker facing this issue. The ultra-compact Smart car was sold overseas for nine years, but before Daimler AG could bring it to the United States, it had to make the car longer to meet US crash standards, spokesman Ken Kettenbeil said.

But Ford's promise to bring six small, fuel-efficient vehicles from Europe and start building them in North America in 2010 puts a new focus on the challenge of satisfying governments' varying requirements.

These global models are the cornerstone of Ford's plan to return to profitability after losing $8.7 billion last quarter.

Automakers know how to retrofit their vehicles but question the time and expense involved when the changes may not make vehicles safer, said Jim Vondale, director of Ford's safety office.

"It may involve changes to the structure, it may involve changes to material, but they result in not so many differences in the safety levels of the vehicles," he said.