Action
Denial of a petition for a defect investigation.
Summary
This notice sets forth the reasons for the denial of a petition, DP19-003, submitted by Mr. Kevin O'Brien to the Administrator of NHTSA (the "Agency") by a letter dated August 12, 2019. The petition requests that the agency initiate a safety defect investigation into an alleged "excessive stalling problem" experienced by operators of 2019 Model Year (MY) Volkswagen GTI, Jetta GLI, and Golf GTI manual transmission vehicles (the "subject vehicles") "as the vehicles slow to a stop or prepare to make a turn across traffic with the clutch pressed in and the car in neutral." After conducting a technical review of: (1) Consumer complaints submitted by the petitioner; (2) consumer complaint information in NHTSA's databases; and (3) information provided by Volkswagen in response to our information requests regarding vehicle stalling and complaints received by Volkswagen, NHTSA's Office of Defect Investigations (ODI) has concluded that it is unlikely that additional investigation would result in a finding that a defect related to motor vehicle safety exists. As a result, no further investigation of the issue raised by the petition is warranted and the agency, accordingly, has denied the petition.