Lawmakers, safety groups and industry warn NHTSA staffing cuts and slow rulemaking are hampering auto safety
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Summary
At a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing, members and witnesses warned that staff losses and delayed rulemakings at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are slowing deployment of technologies that experts say would reduce roadway deaths and injuries.
At a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing, members of Congress, safety advocates and auto industry representatives said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is under-resourced and too slow to finalize rules that experts say would save lives.
Ranking Member Frank Pallone said the nation faces “almost 40,000” traffic deaths a year and that NHTSA needs staff and authority to complete rules Congress ordered in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. Dr. David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), described the United States as “in the middle of a road safety emergency,” pointing to a nearly 30% increase in crash deaths from 2014 to 2022 and urging stronger, faster agency action.
Industry witness John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, told the panel that the agency’s pace needs modernizing: “NHTSA has become less transparent and less collaborative,” he said. Bozzella urged reforms including modernization of the New Car Assessment Program, streamlining obsolete rules and ensuring NHTSA is properly staffed to support innovation and safety.
Safety advocates emphasized technologies Congress has already directed NHTSA to pursue. Kathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, urged completion of rules for impaired-driving prevention systems and child-detection equipment for hot-car prevention, saying "the technology exists and works" and stressing the need for minimum performance standards.
Members expressed concern that recent administration actions and staffing reductions have slowed the agency’s work. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers and others pressed witnesses on how to ensure rulemakings move forward and how Congress can hold the agency accountable. Witnesses and lawmakers repeatedly tied NHTSA capacity to deployment timelines for automatic emergency braking, occupant-detection systems and impaired-driving technology that many testified would prevent thousands of deaths.
The hearing produced no formal votes. Lawmakers signaled interest in using reauthorization and oversight to require NHTSA to issue rules by specified deadlines, but no new statutory actions were adopted at the hearing.
Ending: Committee members said they will continue oversight and consider legislative steps in the surface transportation reauthorization process to press NHTSA to finalize outstanding rulemakings. Several witnesses offered to work with the committee on drafting statutory language and on technical details for minimum performance standards.