Comparative Research And Enlightenment Automobiles States Defective Product Recall System

The car parc in China has reached114million by July of2012, duringthe first half of which the output and sales volume of our domesticautomobiles both surpassed19million. Meanwhile, while China becomingthe world’s largest automobile consumer, it comes frequent accidentsincurred by deficiencies in automobile products, bringing about greatlosses to consumers’ health and property, and also presenting a threatto social public security. On one hand, due to relatively highverification cost and less access to related information, it’s difficultfor consumers, who suffer losses from those vehicle defects and stay ata weaker position compared with auto makers and sellers, to convenientlyand quickly get valid evidence on the product quality, thus their rightsnot being effectively protected. On the other hand, although China haslong been the largest automobile consumer in the world, it’s still hardfor our national auto brands to go global and to have a place in the matureEuropean and American markets, the main reason for which is the late startand slow development of our national auto industry, and that the qualityof our automobile products fails to gain wide recognition of foreignconsumers. In2004, our government established the recall system ofdefective automobile products, also taken as the exploration andsupplement to the recall system of defective products as well as productliability system, for the purpose to effectively solve and prevent theaforesaid problems caused by defects in vehicle products, protect theconsumer rights, safeguard social public security, maintain the economicorder in automobile product market, and promote healthy and rapiddevelopment of our national auto brands and the whole domestic autoindustry. In the end of2012, after8years’ development, the new DefectiveAutomobile Products Recall Regulations was issued by the Chinese government, symbolizing a significant progress in this field. However,compared with the recall systems in America, EU and Japan taking the leadthat have been running for nearly50years, our system in this regard stillremains at the primary level, with many inadequacies to be corrected andcompleted. This paper, by studying and making comparison among differentrecall systems, especially that of America and the EU, makes analysis andconclusions on the advanced aspects of their systems in terms ofspecialized recall department, clear defect identification, strongtechnological and financial supports, and the tendency of heavierpenalties, and based on which puts forward comments and suggestion on theimprovement of our recall system of defective automobile products and itsimplementation details, including to establish specialized stateinstitution for the recall management of defective automobile productsas soon as possible, complete automotive product defect examination andverification mechanism, strengthen financial and technical supports,increase penalties on enterprises violating the recall system, developautomobile product recall insurance, enhance related propaganda andtraining etc. As superficial the thoughts might be, the starting pointand objective of this paper is based on the author’s several years of legalwork experience in the auto industry, thus having certain pertinence andmaneuverability. This study by the author is also designated to inspiremore innovative ideas and more profound researches about the regulationson product defects liability in auto industry. The author hopes that, withconcerted effort by all scholars and legal workers, our product liabilitynorms and consumer protection mechanism will be more robust and complete.