LegiStorm

Summary:

Federal motor vehicle safety regulation was established more than 50 years ago by the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (P.L. 89-563) to address the rising number of motor vehicle fatalities and injuries. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) administers vehicle safety laws and has issued dozens of safety standards, including regulations affecting windshield wipers, hood and door latches, tires, and airbags. NHTSA has estimated that between 1960 and 2012, federal motor vehicle safety standards saved more than 600,000 lives, and the risk of a fatality declined by 56%. Although dozens of technologies were made subject to federal standards in the decades after federal regulation began, a NHTSA study reported that more than half of the lives saved—329,000—were from use of seat belts. While the federal standard was helpful in reducing fatalities, the study found that the passage of state laws allowing police to issue tickets if a driver or passengers are not wearing seat belts caused the number of lives saved to climb from 800 per year to 6,000 per year. In addition to promulgating and enforcing vehicle safety standards, NHTSA investigates vehicle defects that affect safety and issues vehicle or parts recalls if safety defects are discovered. In recent years, the number of vehicle and parts recalls has risen significantly, from 16.3 million vehicles and parts in 2013 to 87.5 million in 2015. The rising number of recalls is due to stricter laws and reporting requirements, larger fines, delayed detection of vehicle problems by NHTSA, and several high-visibility cases, including General Motors’ faulty ignition switch and Takata airbags. Recalls rarely obtain 100% completion rates, leaving many defective vehicles on the road long after a recall is initiated. A recent study by J.D. Power, a market research company, showed that between 2013 and 2015, recalls of fewer than 10,000 vehicles had a 67% completion rate, while recalls of more than a million vehicles had a completion rate of only 49%. The larger recalls are thought to result in fewer repaired vehicles because of the difficulty in finding and notifying larger numbers of owners, a lengthened repair period due to lack of an adequate supply of replacement parts, and the ability of manufacturers to use more personalized communications, such as telephone calls, in smaller recalls. Many emerging technologies, such as automatic emergency braking and lane departure warning, are expected to reduce vehicle injuries and deaths in the future. Over time, these separate technologies will be combined as vehicles are built with higher levels of automation. To deal with these rapid changes, NHTSA has broadened the agency’s approach beyond the traditional rulemaking to include new means of interacting with manufacturers and other vehicle safety stakeholders, such as voluntary agreements to accelerate use of life-saving technologies. The 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act included significant vehicle safety provisions, including a new requirement that rental car fleets be covered by recalls, new methods for notifying consumers about recalls, larger penalties for violations, and a longer period for consumers to obtain remedies for defects. Congress remains interested in motor vehicle safety; proposed legislation calls for used vehicles to be subject to recalls, NHTSA to provide more public access to safety information, civil penalties to be increased, regional recalls to be terminated, and federal standards to be issued to secure electronic motor vehicle data from hackers.