Ministry meetings held over cruise control malfunctions

Abu Dhabi: Experts from the Emirates Standardisation and Metrology Authority and car dealers have discussed ways to prevent defaults of cruise control systems, and to ensure the highest safety standards in cars that are exported to UAE markets, a source told Gulf News.

The meeting, held on Wednesday in Dubai, is the second in a series of meetings between the federal authority and car agents in the UAE in response to four incidents of cruise control malfunction.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Economy said it had received a final technical report from the local agent of the vehicles which have been involved in cruise control malfunctions.

The ministry said it has been investigating cases of four incidents in this regard.

The most recent incident happened on August 11 when a young Emirati, driving a 4x4 on Emirates Road to Ras Al Khaimah from Dubai, suddenly realised the cruise control system was stuck as he drove at 120km/h.

In February, another vehicle driven by a young Emirati along the Abu Dhabi-Al Ain road, got stuck in cruise control at 160km/h.

In both cases, police chased down the cars and got the drivers safely out of their vehicles.

No further details about the report were given by either the company or the ministry but the results could be announced next week.

The ministry said: “Should the technical reports prove that the issue of the cruise control is manufacturing error, the agent or auto dealer is obliged to fix this problem for free and should provide an alternative auto until the issue is duly fixed. If the issue exists, the agent has to replace the car.”

“Once we have the technical reports, we will be able to ascertain whether we need to revise the current safety standards,” Mohammad Badri, acting director of ESMA, said.

ESMA had two meetings with the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association (Jama) on Wednesday and yesterday.

“We are meeting with Jama and this is one of the issues that we will discuss, besides discussing overall safety features of vehicles coming into the UAE,” Badri said.

“ESMA is assessing the finding of the technical report submitted by the agent in order to decide on this issue. We will see the reasons for the failure of cruise control system before deciding on imposing mandatory measures and specifications on all autos’ cruise control systems for cars imported to the UAE,” explained Badri.

He added: “Safety and security are undisputed priorities. Should the report prove that there is a technical problem with the cruise control system, ESMA will force the agent and auto dealers to pull out the cars from the UAE market and from the GCC states. We will enforce mandatory specifications for cruise control systems.”

A car dealer had told the Gulf News: “Such technical investigations would happen if vehicles are modified to increase speed and such malfunction would arise due to the vehicle being imported from another country that is not in accordance with UAE specifications. This kind of modification is quite common in the GCC region.”

ESMA is also coordinating with other GCC countries to probe similar incidents and investigate the causes.

“The investigations are mainly technical. We are looking at different aspects like the design problem, the system and other areas to see whether the issue is specific to one model or there is a larger concern,” said Badri.