lexus that has been recalled -- that have been recalled that is the best bet. >> do other companies have similar problems like we have seen with toyota that consumers do not know about? >> every manufacturer has a problem. in terms of unintended acceleration, toyota is far and away -- they can't explain what goes wrong, and the government has done investigations with no for it -- floormat. it comes down to electronics. toyota hasn't gotten to the bottom of that, and it does not make sense. >> mark in new york, go ahead. >> am i on? >> you are, go ahead. go ahead with your question or comment.

>> i wanted asked about the new cars they had today. i know they have in your bodies and they are small. but i want to know, how come they don't make any cars like he 225 -- the 225 that had the long bodies? . .

>> you was on a dirt road, turning onto pavement and as he turned about 15 or 20 miles per hour, thankfully, he did not hit anything because there was nothing to hit. he did not go over a bump, nothing. we immediately -- his airbag went off. onstar came on. i almost took that same truck and would have been out on a double highway if i was in the same situation. he had started t it and it went off like this after about 3 miles. we took it to the dealer we

bought it from. we had 25,000 miles on it. still under full warranty and they called some guy from detroit to come out and look at it. they had their inspectors look at it. we thought there would be no problem. they said that my husband had washed out the truck mapped out in the center got what. insurance would not cover it because it was not a defect. i said what if my granddaughter poured a cup of tea and that same vulnerable spot that apparently water got into. i am wondering if you have any other silverado pickup trucks that have had this problem? >> i do not know about silverado trucks but gm did recall for air bag sensors that get wet. there is a design flaw. that sensor should not have gone

off. it should have been waterproof. a piece of practical advice, take gm and your insurance company to small claims court and let them appoint figures at each other and sort it out. >> next phone call from oakland, california. >> i was wondering if anybody has checked out the possibility of cell phones or any other electronic hand-held device causing an interruption in the car computer? >> there have been three recalls were cell phones have caused the electronic transmission in a vehicle to solve actuate. clearly, cell phone interference can do that. you have to find the right frequency, the right location and the testing to do this is incredibly complicated. there is no doubt about it, based on the recalls, cell phone interference can trigger the electronics and make them act

inappropriately. >> barbara in florida. >> are the highway and street lanes wide enough for traffic moving at 70 miles per hour? >> they are required by a geometric design standards to be wide enough for doing that. the issue is with some big trucks that are on the smaller highways.

basically, the highways are designed for safety. what are they the same size they were when they first began highways? >> unless you are driving in a city where they put a lot of parking and restricted lanes, the freeways and highways themselves are the same design standards that have always been. >> here is a tweet from one of our viewers. where was the oversight from congress that is representative of iss'as committee when these were filed years ago? this congress share in the blame here? there was a period of time and the 1980's and 1990's when there were very few oversight hearings. congress should have been asking more congress -- more questions in conducting more oversight which they did not do. >> hello. i had a couple of comments. i was driving my mother in a 1993 buick lesabre from one town to another and i had the cruise control on. when i tapped the break to knock it off and we went into town, we got close to the graveyard and i went to push to break again and the car sped off. i asked my mechanic later what

happened and he said you have to turn the thing off on the turn signal finge for -- turn signal thing to override the cruise control. that was back in 2002. does that have anything to do whaith what is do not with toyo? my father invented the he did win showed wiper. he could not get anybody. he tried like crazy. he could not get anybody to go along with it. he had the gas develop it put a deal in colorado on the thing that goes through after all the skiers are down because they were always burning up this to that goes down.

the cat that worked for delorean -- the guy that worked for delorean, the guy had a snow mobile company. he saw this and he said i would like to get 100,000 of those. my dad was just developing it. we tried to general motors and ford and everybody and they just kept turning us down. >> with the invention, they do not want to pay royalties on an outside invention in the automobile industry. gm has recently installed some heater window wiper devices. getting the company to put it on their cars, you are up for a battle. in terms of your buick, there were a couple recalls for cruise

controls that did exactly what you talked about on gm vehicles and you can contact our website and file a complaint >> another tweet from one of our viewers. what are their extremely few unresolved cases in europe where there is a larger economy and population? he is making the claim that there are fewer unresolved cases in europe compared to the u.s.? >> they have to define unresolved cases. europe, if you look at those vehicles, there are a lot more vehicles with break overrides. that would explain fewer sudden acceleration cases in europe. second, european drivers are

more adapted shifting into neutral and using breaks to bring a car under control. >> back to this country, how many complaints does nhtsa get? >> they only get about 20,000 to 40,000 complaints per year. they used to get 100,000 or 200,000 per year. >> how are they handled? >> not very well. the agency, this gets into the resource issue. they do not have enough investigators to go through every complaint. what you find is the complaints mass up until there is a critical mass and it should be a warning system when they look at things as they come in. >> take cod, massachusetts. >> thank you. i was wondering if it is in the

manufacturer's best interest to make cars? >> absolutely. safety sales. -- safety sells. it is the regulatory equivalent of war against the air bags in the early 1990's. manufacturers cannot sell enough air bags these days. >> what about the fact that nhtsa's a budget grew from 1980 from $15 million to $434 million. it seems as though it is going to keep going up. >> more of that money went into the driver programs, the highway programs, then it did into vehicle programs.

we have been in balance. if you look at the entire department of transportation budget, about 99% of all transportation-related deaths but only 1% of the budget is for vehicle safety. >> joe in new jersey. >> i was wondering about the importance of speed on the roads and how you are going to be calling into that as time goes by because we do not talk enough about it. you just mentioned about the europeans having automatically shifting into neutral. i was wondering if you mentioned that when you talk about these

increases in speeds with these cars that are getting like that. >> you are talking to the group that is strongly in favor of the now defunct 55 mile per hour speed limit. if you are driving down the road at 70 miles per hour, you are covering much more ground than you are at 55. the energy of the vehicle goes up proportion to the velocity -- proportional to the velocity. you have a lot more to handle. the higher the speed, the less safe. if society has made a compromise of 65 on most roads. we are a consumer group founded by ralph nader backed in 1970. we get the ford pinto recalled. we have gotten airbags in every car. we are a very happy group. we will get toyota behind us, too. >> thank you. my question, i have been

watching c-span all day asking these executives, why are they going so easy on them? if it was an american-made auto company, they would get nasty with them. it is like they are afraid to speak up. we just got done talking about the ford pinto. they forced that out of production. the core of there, they forced that out of production. -- the corvair, they forced that out of production. >> if you look at the fine but the government wants to collect, that is 16 times higher than the highest to date. i dare say that toyota would say that you are picking on us at not gm. we look at the government as an

equal opportunity regulator. if an auto company does wrong, it should be put to task. today it is toyota, the market could be ford or gm. >> one last call. >> we will have to end it there. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. >> if you have watched our coverage on c-span of the hearings of cleo and opposite the overall, if you want to watch them again or if you have not seen them, go to c-span.org. you can see them all there. thank you for being with us this evening. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> in a few moments, a briefing on nuclear weapons policy with defense secretary gates and secretary of state clinton. and a little more than one hour,

a preview of next week's summit on nuclear weapons. after that, director of national intelligence dennis blair on the state of the intelligence community. >> on "washington journal" tomorrow morning, we look at the plans for nuclear weapons. pollsters talk about this year's elections and we talked about the hispanic community'. washington journal is live in every day at 7:00 eastern. >> michelle obama, who is focusing on fighting childhood obesity, sits down tomorrow withcam c-span's students

winner. other film makers from around the country will join the conversation. that is live tomorrow at 11:00 eastern on c-span. >> this month, see the winners of c-span's studentcam documentary competition. middle and high school students from 45 states submitted videos on what -- on one of the country's greatest strengths or a challenge the country is facing. at 8:30, meeting the students that made them and for a preview of all the winners, visit www.studentcam.org. >> robert gates outline the policy of the nuclear posture review, a report mandated by congress. he was joined by secretary of

state hillary clinton, joint chiefs chairman mike mullin and stephen chu. this includes a detailed review of the report by pentagon and state department officials. ,, >> i am pleased to have secretary clinton and secretary chu joining us to make this announcement. their presence is indicative of the importance of the issues and the significant interagency cooperation that the review enjoyed. but secretary clinton and chu and the admiral will make brief comments in a moment. we will take a few questions after that limited to the npr. the npr creates a road map for

president obama's agenda for producing nuclear weapons in the international community. this review describes how the u.s. will reduce the role and numbers of nuclear weapons with a long-term goal of the nuclear- free world. driven by the changing nature of the security environment, the npr opuses on five key objectives. preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism. reducing the role of u.s. nuclear weapons. maintaining strategic deterrence instability at a reduced nuclear force levels. strengthening regional to terrence and reassuring u.s. allies and partners. sustaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. to these ends, the npr shows significant changes to the posture. some of the calculated ambiguity is removed. if a non-nuclear weapon state is

in compliance with non proliferation treaty and obligations, the u.s. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it. if any state eligible for this assurance or to use chemical or biological weapons against the u.s. or its allies or partners, it will face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response. still, given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of biotechnology development, the u.s. reserves the right to make any adjustment to this policy that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of biological weapons. the review rightly praises the prevention of nuclear terrorism and proliferation of the top of the policy agenda. given al qaeda's continued quest for nuclear weapons, the ron's ongoing nuclear efforts and north korea's proliferation,

this is appropriate and is central. -- and the central. the np concluder it that stable deterrence can be maintained that nuclear vehicles can be reduced by 50%. this finding drove negotiations to the new start treaty with russia. the u.s. will pursue high level dialogue on strategic stability with both russia and china that are aimed at fostering a more stable strategic relationships. we will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities. we will study options for ensuring the safety and security and reliability of nuclear warheads on a case by case basis.

any decision to proceed to engineering and development will give a strong preference to refurbishment. replacement of any nuclear components, if absolutely necessary, would require specific presidential approval. correspondingly, the u.s. must make much-needed investments to rebuild our aging nuclear at the structure, both facilities and personnel. i have asked for nearly $5 billion to be transferred from the department of defense to the department of energy over the next several years to improve our nuclear infrastructure and support a credible modernization program. there are also areas of continuity. among them, the u.s. will continue to hold accountable and the state, terrorist group or other non-state actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction. whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe-haven for such efforts.

we will maintain the nuclear triad of icbm's, nuclear-the global aircraft and submarines. we will continue to develop non nuclear capabilities including nuclear -- missile defense. finally, the u.s. will continue abiding by its pledge not to conduct nuclear testing. this review was from beginning to end an interagency effort. i want to express my appreciation to the contributions bridget for the contributions -- for the contributions of each department. i want to thank the men and women of the department of defense and department of energy. the important work underwrites the security of the u.s. as well of that -- as well as that of our partners and allies. >> thank you.

let me begin by thanking you for your leadership in this effort and for the collaboration that persisted throughout. the nuclear posture review we are releasing represents a milestone in the transformation of our nuclear forces and the way in which we approach nuclear issues. we are we calibrating our priorities to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. we are reducing the role and number of weapons in our arsenal while maintaining a safe and secure deterrent to protect our nation. this provides a foundation where we can build a more secure future. this review is important not only for what it says but also the way in which it was conducted. i believe it is the first unclassified review in its totality. secretary gates is responsible

for making this the most inclusive nuclear posture review in history. ,, >> i am very proud of the role that the state department played in making the policy and we will be working with our allies and partners to explain it and implement it. it truly was a collaborative effort in keeping with the agenda and the goals set by president obama. the consultations that supported this process included more than 30 of our allies and partners. for generations, the u.s. nuclear deterrent has helped prevent proliferation by providing our non-nuclear allies with reassurance and security. the policies outlined in this review allow us to continue that

stabilizing role. this review also makes it clear that we will cooperate with partners worldwide to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. under president obama's leadership, we work to advance that agenda beginning with the u.n. security council summit and the president's speech in prague. thursday, the president will be back in prague signing a historic start treaty with russia and next week, president obama will host more than 40 heads of state to tackle the most dangerous threat we face today, the threat of nuclear terrorism. this posture review provides the strategic bases for all of these efforts and demonstrates our commitment to making progress toward disarmament under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. we are enforcing our commitment by stating clearly for the first time that the u.s. will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear

weapon states that are party to the npt and in compliance with their non preparation obligations. we believe this is a important step as we approach the npt review conference next month. let me thank secretary date, secretary chu admiral mullin. you'll be he -- you will be hearing from experts that worked on this. ,,,,

>> let me begin by thanking secretary gates and admiral mullin. the defense department led the effort but this was truly a multi-agency review. it reflects the important expertise of the state department and the energy department and the department of defense. this report reflects the understanding that the effort to reduce nuclear dangers requires an all-out government approach and it reflects the president's commitment to addressing these issues in a way that improves security of the american people, and our friends and allies around the world. the president said that we will sustain a safe, secure, effective nuclear arsenal as long as nuclear weapons exist. this review reflects the commitment. it defines specific steps in the non poor relation -- non-

proliferation regime. it is based on several key principles that will guide future u.s. decisions on management. first, the u.s. will not conduct nuclear testing and will seek gratification -- seek ratification of the test ban treaty. we would not developed new nuclear weapons. our laboratory director and a host of other outside technical reviews have been clear that our extension programs can maintain the safety and effectiveness of the stockpile. to accomplish that goal, the review makes it clear that the u.s. will study options for ensuring the safety ends -- safety and effectiveness on a case by case basis. consistent with mandated programs, approaches will be considered. refurbishment,