AUTOMOBILE SAFETY FOUNDATION

FACTS ABOUT STEERING LOCKS

1. Steering locks cause harm and death by locking a vehicle's steering while driving.

2. Steering locks, introduced in 1969, are a failed anti-theft device that eliminates the need for electrical system knowledge to steal a vehicle. The steering lock can be defeated in under 60 seconds allowing the engine then to be started. Auto theft has tripled since 1969!

3. Steering lock warning and education helps prevent accidents and auto theft.

4. There are safe and effective anti-theft steering lock alternatives. Both General Motors and Ford are well underway replacing the steering lock with modern, safe and effective auto theft prevention technology. Another steering lock alternative is the transmission lock which has been in use by Rolls Royce and SAAB since 1969.

5. Steering locks represent two major extremely unsafe design errors:

(a) they are spring loaded, ignoring the fact that springs have built in metal fatigue, and therefore must eventually malfunction, or wear out. (See "sudden lockup")

(b) The ignition key that deactivates the engine, should never have been combined with a device that simultaneously locks the steering.

6. The steering lock has no merit whatsoever, and constitutes the most dangerous design error in automotive history.

The steering lock is the result of the NHTSA 1969 Rulemaking FMVSS 114. Since 1969 the NHTSA has done nothing to replace the hazardous/obsolete steering lock, or modernize auto theft prevention technology. This NHTSA remission, has allowed auto theft to triple while causing international harm and death for over thirty years!

With nearly two million vehicles stolen annually in the U.S., auto theft is reputedly the nation's number one crime. Though required by Federal Law to address this auto theft crisis, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Justice, for over three decades, have ignored the fact and downright plain truth, that steering locks aid auto theft and make it easy.

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In 1988, ASF co-authored a steering lock warning in the California DMV DRIVER HANDBOOK:

The spring-loaded design of the steering lock is innately hazardous, and can malfunction or wear out, causing the steering to lock suddenly.

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The ASF CARD displays the operation of the six universal steering lock systems.

The information on the ASF CARD is now being printed by National DMV offices and is must reading for all drivers worldwide!

Not only has steering lock operation knowledge become a safe driving fundament, but also drivers need to be apprised of this information so that they can remove keys on borrowed or rented vehicles, thus helping to prevent auto theft. Read more