NHTSA Fines Ferrari $3.5 Million

For those who think that everything’s coming up roses with the highly reputable luxury automaker from Maranello, Italy, well, these people may have well been mistaken. The truth is that the automaker in question, Ferrari, is facing numerous scandals these days. To begin with, its CEO, Luca di Montezemolo, has just resigned from his role at the company. Rumor has it he has some disputes with Sergio Marchionne, the consortium boss at the company. As if that is not enough, the company also just got beaten by Maserati in terms of the profit it earned during the 3rd quarter 2014. Now, there is even another problem. This luxury Italian automaker has been fined as much as $3.5 million by the NHTSA. Of course, the question which will most likely come to mind at this point of time is why the NHTSA fines the company.

As it turns out, the NHTSA – which stands for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – has increased its safety inspection level. Perhaps the media out there are partially responsible for this as they have been criticizing the NHTSA for quite a while now. Before this, the institute had punished the US automaker General Motors for ignition switch issue on its vehicle models. Now, as for Ferrari, it turns out that this federal watchdog does not like how the Italian automaker is not complying to the law in the US that requires automakers to hand in early warning reports (EWR).

According to the US law, automakers have to submit such a report every four months. Unfortunately, Ferrari has not been doing this for the last 36 months, that’s 3 years altogether. To make it even worse, the company did not even report about 3 fatal crashes involving its cars to the NHTSA.

According to Anthony Foxx, the US Transportation Secretary, automakers will not be tolerated for any excuses if they fail to comply with the laws that are meant to assure the safety of the American citizens while on the roads.