Summary: GAO reviewed the Department of Transportation's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) oversight and management procedures for: (1) selecting safety standards, motor vehicles, and equipment for compliance testing; (2) investigating vehicles and equipment that fail compliance tests; and (3) assessing civil penalties against manufacturers or distributors that do not comply with federal standards.
GAO found that: (1) NHTSA has not tested some standards for long periods and has never tested others; (2) the deterrent value of NHTSA testing activities is not as strong as it could be because its selection process does not ensure testing of each standard over a period of time; (3) NHTSA cannot ensure that manufacturers comply with all of its standards because it has excluded some standards from testing; (4) resolving cases can take from less than 1 year to as much as 7 years because NHTSA has not established a system of management controls over the processing of investigation and civil penalty cases; and (5) NHTSA has not established guidelines concerning penalty assessments.
