The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) is an agency of the U.S. federal government, part of the Department of Transportation, focused on automobile safety regulations.
The NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), regulations for motor vehicle theft resistance, and fuel economy, as part of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) system. FMVSS 209 was the first standard to become effective on March 1, 1967. The NHTSA licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the vehicle identification number (VIN) system, develops the crash test dummies used in U.S. safety testing as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information. The agency has asserted preemptive regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions, but this has been disputed by state regulatory agencies such as the California Air Resources Board.
The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are codified under Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Additional federal vehicle standards are contained elsewhere in the CFR. Another of NHTSA's activities is the collection of data about motor vehicle crashes, available in various data files maintained by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, in particular the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS, where technicians investigate a random sample of police crash reports), and others.
Other aspects of U.S. traffic safety, including road design, traffic enforcement, and crash investigation are outside of the NHTSA's jurisdiction.
History
In 1966, Congress held a series of publicized hearings regarding highway safety, passed legislation to make the installation of seat belts mandatory, and created the U.S. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966 (). Legislation signed by President Lyndon Johnson earlier on September 9, 1966, included the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act () and Highway Safety Act () that created the National Traffic Safety Agency, the National Highway Safety Agency, and the National Highway Safety Bureau, predecessor agencies to what would eventually become the NHTSA. Once the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) came into effect, vehicles not certified by the maker or importer as compliant with US safety standards were no longer legal to import into the United States.
Congress established the NHTSA in 1970 with the Highway Safety Act of 1970 (Title II of , at ). In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act () expanded the NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs. Despite improvements in vehicle design and public awareness of issues like drunk driving, traffic fatalities have remained stubbornly high. In the early 2020s, more than 40,000 U.S. residents died in automotive collisions yearly.
The NHTSA has conducted numerous high-profile investigations of automotive safety issues, including the Audi 5000/60 Minutes affair, the Ford Explorer Vehicle rollover problem, and the Toyota sticky accelerator pedal problem. The agency has proposed 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. Most of the reduction in vehicle fatality rates during the last third of the 20th century was gained from the initial NHTSA safety standards during 1968–1984 and subsequent voluntary changes in vehicle crashworthiness by vehicle manufacturers.
Regulatory performance
Government data (from FARS for the U.S.) in a 2004 book by former General Motors safety researcher Leonard Evans shows other countries achieving greater traffic safety improvements over time than those achieved in the United States:
| 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 suggests one reason the U.S. continues to lag in traffic safety is the relatively high prevalence in the U.S. of pickup trucks and SUVs, which a 2003 study by the U.S. Transportation Research Board found are significantly less safe than passenger cars. Comparisons of past data with the present in the U.S. can result in distortions, due to a significant population increase and since the level of large commercial truck traffic has substantially increased from the 1960s, but highway capacity has not kept up. However, other factors exert significant influence; Canada has lower roadway death and injury rates despite a vehicle mix and regulations similar to those of the U.S. 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.
In January 2025, the NHTSA opened a preliminary investigation into 877,710 General Motors trucks and SUVs (model years 2019–2024) after receiving 39 complaints and reports of engine failures caused by bearing issues. The probe aims to assess the scope and severity of the problem, with General Motors stating its full cooperation.
International counterparts and the grey market
Because of the unavailability in America of certain vehicle models, a grey market arose in the late 1970s. This provided a method to acquire vehicles not officially offered in the United States, but enough vehicles imported this way were faulty, shoddy, and unsafe that Mercedes-Benz of North America helped launch a successful congressional lobbying effort to close down the grey market in 1988. As a result, it was no longer possible to import foreign vehicles into the United States as a personal import, with few exceptions—primarily vehicles meeting Canadian regulations substantially similar to those of the United States, and vehicles imported temporarily for display or research purposes. In practice, the gray market involved a few thousand cars annually, before its virtual elimination in 1988.
In 1998, the NHTSA exempted vehicles older than 25 years from the rules it administers, since these are presumed to be collector vehicles. In 1999, certain very low production volume specialist vehicles were also exempt for "Show and Display" purposes.
In the mid-1960s, when the framework was established for US vehicle safety regulations, the US auto market was an oligopoly, with three companies (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) controlling 85% of the market. The ongoing ban on newer vehicles considered safe in countries with lower vehicle-related death rates has created a perception that an effect of the NHTSA's regulatory activity is to protect the U.S. market for a modified oligopoly consisting of the three U.S.-based automakers and the American operations of foreign-brand producers. It has been suggested that the impetus for the NHTSA's seeming preoccupation with market control rather than vehicular safety performance is a result of overt market protections such as Import tariff and local-content laws having become politically unpopular due to the increasing popularity of free trade, thus driving the industry to adopt less visible forms of trade restrictions in the form of technical regulations different from those outside the United States.
An example of the market-control effects of the NHTSA's regulatory protocol is found in the agency's 1974 banning of the Citroën SM automobile, which some contemporary journalists describe as one of the safest vehicles available at the time. The NHTSA disapproved the SM's designs featuring steerable headlamps that were not of the sealed beam design that was then mandatory in the U.S. as well as its height adjustable suspension, which made compliance with the 1973 bumper requirements cost-prohibitive. The initial bumper regulations were intended to prevent functional damage to a vehicle's safety-related components such as lights and fuel system components when subjected to barrier crash tests at at the front and at the rear. However, these regulations at low-speed collisions did not enhance occupant safety.
Vehicle manufacturers have acknowledged the functional equivalence of the UN and U.S. regulations, encouraged developing countries to recognize and accept both, and advocated for equal recognition of both systems in developed countries. However, some structural features of the U.S. legal system are incompatible with some aspects of the UN regulatory system. Studies have concluded that commonizing regulations between the US and the rest of the world (which uses ECE Regulations) would save significant money, likely without affecting safety.
The United States was the first country/region to have an NCAP program, which was then copied by other NCAP programs.
The first standardized front crash test was on May 21, 1979, and the first results were released on October 15 that year.
The agency established a frontal impact test protocol based on Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 ("Occupant Crash Protection"), except that the frontal 4 NCAP test is conducted at , rather than as required by FMVSS No. 208.
To improve the dissemination of NCAP ratings, and as a result of the (SAFETEA–LU), the agency has issued a Final Rule requiring manufacturers to place NCAP star ratings on the Monroney sticker (automobile price sticker). The rule had a September 1, 2007 compliance date.
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Cost and cost-benefit
Fuel economy
CAFE regulations
NCAP
See also
Further reading
External links
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