Bendix has done everything by the book. They notified us the way they should. They came in and met us, they presented a formal plan for addressing the problem.

It just doesn't make sense to us to address one safety problem and along the way create a new one.

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.

[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.