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Steven Cliff, who was tapped to head the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), will tell a Senate panel
Thursday the United States has "seen an unprecedented rise in
roadway fatalities. I am committed to turning this around."
He will add the U.S. must learn "how to change a culture that
accepts the loss of tens of thousands of people in roadway
crashes as inevitable."
U.S. traffic deaths soared by 18.4% https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-traffic-deaths-soar-184-first-half-2021-20160-2021-10-28
in the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period a
year earlier, representing the most deadly first half of a year
on American roads since 2006, NHTSA said. It was the largest
six-month increase recorded since the current tracing system has
been in use since 1975.
Cliff, a former California Air Resources Board official who
since February has served as NHTSA's deputy administrator.
Cliff said a new infrastructure bill increases NHTSA’s budget by
50% and "will improve our understanding of where and how crashes
happen by improving data quality and expanding electronic
reporting to move from paper-based data collection systems to
digital systems."
Cliff has been a key figure in the Biden administration's
proposed rewrite of vehicle fuel economy standards through 2026
and is overseeing its safety investigation of electric car maker
Tesla Inc.
The agency, part of the U.S. Transportation Department, faces a
backlog of pending auto safety regulations and has not had a
Senate-confirmed administrator since January 2017, the month
when Republican former President Donald Trump took office.
NHTSA and the Environmental Protection Agency in August proposed
reversing the Trump administration's rollback of Corporate
Average Fuel Economy rules. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the
United States has experienced a sustained increase in traffic
deaths that NHTSA attributes to impaired driving, speeding, a
failure to wear seatbelts and other unsafe behavior.
The Biden administration could unveil final fuel economy and
vehicle greenhouse gas emissions rules as soon as next year,
officials told Reuters.
"I am committed to making the transportation fleet as efficient
as possible, to save consumers billions of dollars at the pump,
to improve the nation’s energy security and to protect the
environment," Cliff's testimony says.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio)
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