National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards as well as 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. 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 anthropomorphic 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 such state regulatory agencies as the California Air Resources Board.


The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are contained in the United States 49 CFR 571. 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.^[9]

International counterparts and the grey market[edit]

In 1958, under the auspices of the United Nations, a consortium called the Economic Commission for Europe had been established to normalize vehicle regulations across Europe to standardize best practices in vehicle design and equipment and minimize technical barriers to pan-European vehicle trade and traffic. This eventually became the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which began to promulgate what would eventually become the UN Regulations on the design, construction, and safety and emissions performance of vehicles and their components. Many of the world's countries accept or require vehicles and equipment built to the UN Regulations,^[21] but the U.S does not recognize the UN Regulations and blocks the importation of vehicles and components not manufacturer-certified as complying with the U.S. regulations.^[22]


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^[23][24][25] that Mercedes-Benz of North America helped launch a successful congressional lobbying effort to close down the grey market in 1988.^[26] 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.^[27]


In 1998, NHTSA exempted vehicles older than 25 years from the rules it administers, since these are presumed to be collector vehicles.^[22] 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 (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) controlling 85% of the market.^[28] The ongoing ban on newer vehicles considered safe in countries with lower vehicle-related death rates has created a perception that an effect of 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^[29] that the impetus for NHTSA's seeming preoccupation with market control rather than vehicular safety performance is a result of overt market protections such as tariffs 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.^[30]


An example of the market-control effects of NHTSA's regulatory protocol is found in the agency's 1974 banning of the Citroën SM automobile, which contemporary journalists described as one of the safest vehicles available at the time. 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 5 miles per hour (8 km/h) at the front and 2.5 mph (4 km/h) at the rear.^[31] However, these regulations at low-speed collisions did not enhance occupant safety.^[32]


Vehicle manufacturers have acknowledged the functional equivalence of the UN and U.S. regulations, encouraged developing countries to recognize and accept both,^[21] and advocated for equal recognition of both systems in developed countries.^[33] However, some structural features of the U.S. legal system are incompatible with some aspects of the UN regulatory system.^[34] Studies have concluded that commonizing regulations between the US and the rest of the world (which uses U.N. Regulations) would save significant money, likely without affecting safety.^[35]

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Department of Transportation.