In the mid 1960s when the framework was established for US vehicle safety regulations, the US auto market was an oligopoly, with just three companies ( GM, Ford, and Chrysler) controlling 85% of the market. This technology was first brought to public attention in 1997, with the Swedish moose test.Ĭonsumers today have a far greater amount of auto safety information available, due to the efforts of NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In the US, NHTSA has introduced a proposal to mandate Electronic Stability Control on all passenger vehicles by the 2012 model year. NHTSA has conducted numerous high-profile investigations of automotive safety issues, including the Audi 5000/60 Minutes affair, the Ford Explorer rollover problem and the Toyota: Sticky accelerator pedal problem. The number of deaths on American highways hover around 40,000 annually, a lower death rate per mile travelled than in the 1960s. Since this era, automobiles have become far better in protecting their occupants in vehicle impacts. In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act expanded NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs. The NHTSA was officially established in 1970 by the Highway Safety Act of 1970. standards were no longer legal to import into the United States. Once the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards came into effect, vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards but not the U.S. This legislation created several predecessor agencies which would eventually become the NHTSA, including the National Traffic Safety Agency, the National Highway Safety Agency, and the National Highway Safety Bureau. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966).
NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION SERIES
In 1966, Congress held a series of highly publicized hearings regarding highway safety, passed legislation to make installation of seat belts mandatory, and enacted Public Law 89-563, Public Law 89-564, and Public Law 89-670 which created the U.S.
In 19, public pressure grew in the US to increase the safety of cars, culminating with the publishing of Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader, an activist lawyer, and the National Academy of Sciences' "Accidental Death and Disability-The Neglected Disease of Modern Society". However, vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards were legal to import into the United States. The United States declined to join the forum or adopt its (or any other) vehicle safety regulations at that time.
In 1958, the UN established the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which began to promulgate what would eventually become UN's Economic Commission for Europe or ECE Regulations on vehicle design, construction, and safety performance. This regulation, virtually unchanged for the next 40 years, set a pattern of using auto safety design legislation to freeze innovation at a point in time. In 1940, the United States implemented automobile design legislation, concerning sealed beam headlamps, which had recently been invented and were an important safety advance at that time. Even with this database, conclusive analysis of crash causes often remains difficult and controversial, with experts debating the veracity and statistical validity of results. Research contributions using FARS by researchers from many countries appear in many non-US technical publications, and provide a significant database and knowledge bank on the subject. In particular, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS, has become a resource for traffic safety research not only in the US, but throughout the world. The agency has asserted preemptive regulatory authority over Greenhouse gas emissions, but this has been disputed by such state regulatory agencies as the California Air Resources Board.Īnother of NHTSA’s major activities is the creation and maintenance of the data files maintained by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis.
NHTSA also licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the VIN system, develops the anthropomorphic dummies used in safety testing, as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information. It describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.” Īs part of its activities, NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing safety, theft-resistance, and fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, the latter under the rubric of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) system. Government, part of the Department of Transportation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA, often pronounced "nit-suh") is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S.
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