National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, often pronounced "nit-suh") is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”.

As part of its activities, NHTSA is charged with safety performance and fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, the latter called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). It also licenses vehicle manufacturers and vehicle importers, allows or blocks importation of vehicles, safety-related vehicle parts (including seatbelts, airbags, safety glass, side airbags, brakes, accelerators, bumpers, tires, doorlocks, odometers) vehicle-theft prevention including vehicle identification number (VIN), anthropormorphic dummies used in testing, vehicle test procedures, insurance cost information, emissions controls, and child restraint seats. It has asserted preemptive regulatory control over Greenhouse gas emissions but this has been disputed by many state regulatory agencies including California Air Resources Board.

One of NHTSA’s major achievements in pursuit of its safety mission is the data files maintained by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. 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. Research contributions using FARS by researchers from many countries appear in many non-US technical publications, and provide the most solid knowledge on the subject. Even with this database, conclusive analysis of crash causes often remains difficult and controversial, with experts arguing the statistical validity of results.

History

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. 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 1958, the UN established the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which began to promulgate what would eventually become the internationalised UNECE Regulations on vehicle design, construction, and safety performance. The United States declined to join the forum or adopt its (or any other) vehicle safety regulations at that time. However, vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards were legal to import into the United States.

In 1965 and 1966, 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".

In 1966, Congress held a series of highly publicized hearings regarding highway safety, and passed legislation to make installation of seat belts mandatory, and 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. One result was vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards were no longer automatically legal to import into the United States.

The NHTSA was officially established in 1970 by the Highway Safety Act of 1970. In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act expanded NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs.

Since this era, automobiles have become far better in protecting their occupants in vehicle impacts. The number of deaths on American highways hover around 40,000 annually, a lower death rate per mile travelled than in the 1960s.

NHTSA has conducted numerous high-profile investigations of automotive safety issues, including the Audi 5000/60 Minutes affair and the Ford Explorer rollover problem.

In the US, NHTSA has introduced a proposal to mandate Electronic Stability Control on all passenger vehicles by the 2012 model year. This technology was first brought to public attention in 1997, with the Swedish moose test.

Consumers today have a far greater amount of auto safety information available, due to the efforts of NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

FMVSS and UNECE

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. At that time, the USA had safer traffic than any country in the world, whether measured by the number of traffic deaths per thousand vehicles, or the number of traffic deaths per 100 million miles.

The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are contained in the United States Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, Part 571. This is commonly referred to as 49CFR571, with any particular FMVSS appended after a period, as for example 49CFR571.301 — the location of FMVSS 301. Additional Federal vehicle standards are contained elsewhere in the CFR. For instance, 49CFR564 contains the specifications and requirements for the various types of replaceable headlamp "light source" (bulb). FMVSS 209 was the first standard to become effective on March 1, 1967.

Although a system of uniform auto safety performance and equipment regulations had been in place in Europe since 1958, the US did not seek to adopt or harmonize with these UNECE regulations, which have since been adopted by virtually all industrialized countries outside North America. Compared to the ECE regulations, US regulations are fundamentally different in philosophy, content, emphasis, and enforcement protocol. Vehicles conforming to the internationalized (originally European) ECE regulations are allowed or required throughout the entire rest of the world, but such vehicles are illegal in the US because they don't conform to the US regulations.

Despite the evolution of the North American auto market to include most of the world's major automakers, and the ongoing proliferation of US safety regulations, the previously-existing market oligopoly still exerts strong influence: US vehicle equipment and construction regulations are based almost entirely on SAE standards, which were written almost entirely by US automakers.

The results of this regulatory philosophy and practice do not support a safety-related basis for the prohibition on ECE vehicles: despite the sizeable auto safety lead enjoyed by the USA in the 1960s, by 2002 the US had sunk to 16th place(behind Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) in terms of deaths per thousand vehicles. In terms of deaths per 100 million miles, the USA had dropped from first place to tenth place. With the partial exception of Canada, all of the countries achieving better safety results either require or permit vehicles built to comply with the ECE regulations, not the US regulations.

In a 2004 book, former General Motors safety researcher Leonard Evans asserts that changes in death totals, all from government-published data (FARS for US), showed inferior safety performance in the U.S. compared to other countries:

	1979 Fatalities	2002 Fatalities	Percent Change
United States	51,093	42,815	-16.2%
Great Britain	6,352	3,431	-46.0%
Canada	5,863	2,936	-49.9%
Australia	3,508	1,715	-51.1%

Research on the trends in use of heavy vehicles indicate that a significant difference between the U.S. and other countries is the relatively high prevalence of pickup trucks and SUVs in the U.S., which are less crashworthy than passenger cars and kill more pedestrians and bicyclists as well as occupants of cars in multiple-vehicle crashes. However, other factors exert significant influence; Canada has lower roadway death and injury rates despite a vehicle mix comparable to that of the US. Nevertheless, the widespread use of truck-based vehicles as passenger carriers is correlated with roadway deaths and injuries not only directly by dint of vehicular safety performance per se, but also indirectly through the relatively low fuel costs that facilitate the use of such vehicles in North America. Motor vehicle fatalities decline as gasoline prices increase. NHTSA has issued few regulations in the past 25 years. Most of the reduction in vehicle fatality rates during the last third of the 20th Century were gained from the initial NHTSA safety standards during 1968-1984 and subsequent voluntary changes in vehicle crashworthiness by vehicle manufacturers NHTSA's regulatory priorities and protocols have had an effect on the economic and selection aspects of the US vehicle market, as illustrated by the manner in which the grey market was dealt with.

The Grey Market

The United States, having chosen to make its automobile design regulations incompatible with the internationalized ECE regulations, has gone a step further by blocking the importation of vehicles built to the international standards rather than to those of the USA.

Because of the unavailability of certain vehicles in the US, a grey market arose in the late 1970s. This provided an alternate, legal method to acquire vehicles only sold overseas. The success of the grey market, however, ate into the business of Mercedes-Benz of North America Inc, which launched a successful congressional lobbying effort to eliminate this alternative for consumers in 1988, despite the lack of any evidence suggesting grey-market vehicles were less safe than those built to comply with US regulations. As a result, it is no longer possible to import a non-US vehicle into the United States as a personal import, with few exceptions—primarily Canadian cars with safety regulations substantially similar to the United States, and vehicles imported temporarily for display or research purposes.

In 1998, NHTSA exempted vehicles older than 25 years from the rules it administers, since these are presumed to be collector vehicles. However, the ban on newer vehicles considered safe in countries with lower vehicle-related death rates creates the impression that the main effect of NHTSA's regulatory activity is to protect the US market for a modified oligopoly consisting of the three US-based automakers and the US operations of foreign-brand producers. It has been suggested that the impetus for NHTSA's seeming preoccupation with market control rather than vehicular safety performance is a result of overt market protections such as tariffs and local-content laws having become politically unpopular due to the increasing popularity of free trade. This has driven US industry to adopt less visible forms of trade restrictions in the form of technical regulations different but demonstrably not superior to those outside the US.

An example of the market-control effects of NHTSA's regulatory protocol is found in the agency's 1974 banning of the Citroën SM automobile, which contemporary journalists noted was one of the safest vehicles available at the time. NHTSA disapproved the SM due to its high-performance, low-glare, steerable headlamps which were not of the outmoded sealed beam design mandatory in the US, and its height adjustable suspension, which made compliance with the 1973 bumper requirements impossible; ironically the bumper regulation was intended to control the costs resulting from low speed collisions, not enhance occupant safety.

Because the grey market involved only a few thousand luxury cars annually, the effect on the U.S. market was minimal.

Unintended consequences

Some NHTSA standards led to unintended consequences, especially in the early days of NHTSA. The majority Americans in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s did not wear seat belts, which are estimated to reduce the risk of death in a crash by about 45%. NHTSA attempted to promote belt use by a buzzer-light system that operated continuously if belts were not extended from their stowed positions. When that did not significantly increase use, NHTSA's response was an authoritarian one: seat belt/ignition interlock devices allowed as an alternative to airbags in all new 1974 vehicles, which prevented the car starting unless all front-seat occupants were belted. The interlock provoked such an uproar that Congress forced NHTSA to repeal the standard. Airbags were beginning to be discussed as replacements for seat belts — not as supplementary restraints — and while General Motors sold a small number of vehicles with dual front airbags and no front seat belts between 1974 and 1977, the controversial mandate for airbags in all US-sold vehicles did not take force until the early 1990s.

There are nominally strict cost-benefit ratio requirements for every safety device or system NHTSA mandates for installation on vehicles. That is, the device or system must save more money than it costs, or must cost no more than a specified amount of money per life saved, or it may not legally be mandated. Such requirements are subject to manipulation of estimated costs and estimated benefits to justify or reject almost any standard: FMVSS #208 effectively mandates the installation of frontal Airbags in all new vehicles in the US, for it is written such that no other technology can meet the stipulated requirements.. Even using conservative cost figures and optimistic benefit figures, airbags' cost-benefit ratio is quite extreme, and may fall afoul of the cost-benefit requirements for mandatory safety devices , ,, However, when HID headlamps appeared on the market, NHTSA made no move to require automatic beam levelling or lens cleaning equipment, citing lack of cost-effectiveness. Both of these systems are glare-control measures required with these powerful headlamps under ECE Regulations followed outside North America.

The world's first halogen headlamp bulbs, high-performance designs known as H1 and H3, were introduced in Europe in 1962 and 1964, respectively, and quickly became standard the world over, but they were not permitted in the US until 1997. Likewise, the first two-filament high/low beam halogen headlamp bulb, another high-performance design called H4, was introduced in Europe in 1971 and immediately became the world standard, but was not legalized in the US until 1992. Other lighting-related lags speciously attributed to cost-effectiveness regulations selectively obeyed by NHTSA are evident in US regulations; for example, virtually every country in the world has since at least the early 1970s required rear turn signals to emit amber light so they can immediately be discerned from adjacent red brake lamps. US regulations still permit rear turn signals to emit red light, citing the same cost-effectiveness regulations.

NHTSA also administers the controversial Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program. The Wall Street Journal and others have argued that this program distorts market incentives, forcing people to buy smaller, less safe vehicles. CAFE may be a driving factor behind the explosion in demand for SUVs, which are considered "light trucks" for CAFE purposes and therefore are not required to meet the stricter standards for vehicles classified as "cars." The counter argument is that conveying the actual cost of oil and its externalities to the US consumer is not politically feasible. Another difficulty is that fuel economy is negatively correlated to vehicle weight — lighter vehicles give better fuel economy. At the same time, vehicle weight is positively correlated to safety — within any vehicle class, such as passenger cars, larger and heavier vehicles better protect their occupants. Thus, NHTSA must accomplish two contradictory regulatory goals at the same time. However, the correlation between vehicle weight and safety does not hold across vehicle-class lines; SUVs and pickup trucks are significantly less safe than passenger cars. Some researchers dispute the incompatibility of reduction in vehicle weight and increased fuel economy.

Aerodynamics brings change to NHTSA

Automakers faced an inherent conflict between NHTSA's stringent headlight legislation, which froze U.S. headlight technology in 1940, and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, which effectively mandated that automakers develop ways to improve the ability of the car to cleave the air. As a result, in the early 1980s, automakers lobbied for a modification of the mandate for fixed shape sealed-beam headlamps.

NHTSA adopted Ford's proposal for low-cost aerodynamic headlamps with polycarbonate lenses and transverse-filament bulbs.

For the 1984 model year, Ford introduced the Lincoln Mark VII, the first car since 1939 to be sold in the US market with architectural headlamps as part of its aerodynamic design. These composite headlamps, when new to the U.S. market, were commonly but improperly referred to as "Euro" headlamps, since aerodynamic headlamps were already common in Europe. Though conceptually similar to European headlamps with nonstandardized shape and replaceable-bulb construction, these headlamps conform to the SAE headlamp design standards contained in U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108, and not to the international safety standards used worldwide outside North America.

Consistent with allowing automobile designers appropriate levels of freedom to do their work, the minimum allowed performance and materials durability requirements of this new headlamp system were actually lower than those of the old sealed beam system.

Administration

NHTSA's 2006 budget distribution

The agency has an annual budget of US $815 Million (2007). The agency classifies most of its spending under the "driver safety" heading, with a minority spent on vehicle safety and a tiny sliver on environmental matters of which it is in charge.

The current Administrator is Nicole R. Nason, a lawyer who was appointed to the position effective May 31, 2006, by President Bush. In August 2007, the New York Times reported that the NHTSA communications office is allowed to provide information to reporters only on a "background" basis; no one at the office can be quoted by name. The NHTSA policy implemented by Nason allows information to be attributed only to political appointees; career employees (the technical experts at the agency) also may not be quoted by name. David Kelly, Nason's chief of staff, told the Times reporter that he did not want to be quoted with regards to his comments about the non-quotation policy.

See also

• Euro NCAP
• Fatality Analysis Reporting System
• National Transportation Safety Board
• Not Invented Here syndrome
• Road-traffic safety
• Vehicle inspection

Sources

• Traffic Safety
• National Archives entry
• Washington Post article
• DOT's list of operating administrators of the NHTSA

External links

• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website
• Regulations regarding vehicle importation into the US
• Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS):
  • Definitions.
  • Safety testing.

Further reading

• Kevin M. McDonald, "Shifting Out of Park: Moving Auto Safety from Recalls to Reason" (Lawyers & Judges Publishing, 2006).
• Evans, Leonard (2004). Traffic Safety. Science Serving Society. ISBN 0975487108.
• Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, Transportation. Office of the Federal Register National Archives and Records Administration. 2004. pp. pp. 19 - 1263. ISBN 0160728916. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)