What’s the Deal With Those New Vehicle Safety Laws, Senate Asks

On Tuesday, a coalition of Democratic senators asked safety regulators to get a move on establishing new rules as required by the $1-trillion infrastructure law that was signed by President Joe Biden in 2021. The legislation stipulates that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “modernize” vehicle safety requirements to include things like driver-monitoring cameras, automatic engine shut off, adaptive headlights, rear seat reminders, modern crash avoidance tech, and even interlock devices designed to prevent vehicles from operating if the driver is impaired by alcohol. The group says the NHTSA is past due on providing a progress report on the matter and has issued a letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT) demanding action as per-capita motor vehicle fatalities continue to climb.

“Nearly 43,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2021, the highest number in sixteen years, and according to preliminary numbers, 2022 has been equally, if not more, deadly,” reads the letter. “Fortunately, the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] required NHTSA to take much-needed action to ensure this road safety crisis comes to a dead end. We, therefore, urge NHTSA to swiftly implement key safety provisions in the law and reverse this frightening trend in motor vehicle fatalities.”

The note was signed by Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT),Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jack Reed (D-RI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). It askes the Department of Transportation to explain why the NHTSA has not yet submitted a report on its progress scheduled for no later than May of 2022.

"Unfortunately, NHTSA has already missed that deadline by six months," the letter said.

Senators are seeking an update on ten items that have been mandated under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act immediately. This includes directives requiring the NHTSA to publish an annual list of recall completion rates (Sec. 24202), conduct research on driver-monitoring systems that could reduce driver distraction and driver disengagement by limiting a vehicle’s functions (Sec. 24209), issue an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to update Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 207 regarding seat safety (Sec. 24204), issue a final rule to require manufacturers to install a device that automatically shuts off the vehicle after it’s been idling for a while (Sec. 24505), and wrap up new standards for headlamps (Sec. 24212) in addition to bumper/hood safety (Sec. 24214).

There are also demands to have regulators conduct research on driver-monitoring systems to reduce driver distraction and driver disengagement (Sec. 24209), which may pair with the monitoring designed to prohibit drunk driving, and calls to have the NHTSA conduct a study on existing requirements for manufacturers to report information and data to DOT to help identify potential safety issues (Sec. 24216).

“When issuing new safety measures, regulators have too often crawled through yellow lights or stalled at red lights. By passing a historic, bipartisan infrastructure law, Congress gave NHTSA the green light to put its pedal to the metal to reduce motor vehicle fatalities,” suggested the letter.

While we’ve posited theories that automotive safety may be heavily impacted by training standards and the general well being of a given nation ( auto fatalities always seem to climb during a recession), the general concept among regulators has centered around the systems that go into a vehicle. Considering the definitive and ample evidence surrounding seatbelt use, it’s hard to bicker there. But the United States has also witnessed a dramatic spike in fatal accidents over the last two years.

Though, if we wanted to be thorough, the first meaningful dip in safety took place in 2015 and was preceded by decades of improvement. Truth be told, you’re still a lot safer on the road today than you would have been in 2002 and that trend more-or-less continues the further back in time you go until you reach the 1960s. But something strange has happened in recent years. Despite cars being loaded up with more safety systems than ever before, accidents rates have been climbing.

My take is that a lot of the items legislators are demanding were poorly defined in the original bill. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was a massive and sweeping piece of legislation and it becomes no less lofty when reduced to the provisions regarding automotive regulation. The mere fact that it even suggests placing driving-monitoring capabilities into all vehicles by law is pretty massive and that’s just one portion of the ten-part directive that not only requires tons of research but also expects a six-month turnaround.

Furthermore, numerous items seem to have nothing to do with safety (e.g. automatic engine shutoff routines) and a few actually have become the subject of research questioning their worthiness as safety devices. Certain advanced driving ads have a long history of not functioning as claimed and there is evidence that they may even diminish reaction times when an emergency takes place. While this may leave one wondering why Congress bothered to include it, remember that legislators aren’t typically all that knowledgeable about the industry and get the brunt of their information directly from lobbyists.

In 2017, legislators were obsessed with “ A Vision for Safety 2.0” and relied heavily on giving automakers leeway to test autonomous vehicles on public roads – the assumption being that getting them to market swiftly would effectively mitigate human error and eventually eliminate automotive accidents altogether. But they had been drinking the marketing Kool-Aid and it would take several years before the general public learned that the timeline established by the industry wasn’t representative of reality. But not before a woman was struck and killed by a self-driving SUV owned by Uber in 2018.

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