Over 5 months after telling Congress a proposed regulation to strengthen automobile seats to make them safer can be revealed “in the coming months,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has but to fulfill a congressional deadline it missed final November.
In the infrastructure legislation signed in November 2021, Congress gave the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the nation’s prime auto security regulator, two years to make automobile seats stronger, following a multi-year CBS News investigation.
“That is actually in the process of being developed. We don’t have any updates to share right now, but it is still being developed at NHTSA,” Sophie Shulman NHTSA deputy administrator, instructed CBS News’ Katie Krupnik at an occasion in Washington, Tuesday. “It’s something that we’re very focused on; it’s an incredibly important safety issue and something we’re very focused on getting done.”
The new proposed regulation stays in what’s generally known as the “pre-rule” stage, and it has been stalled there for over two years.
“For too long, families have had to worry about the safety of their most precious cargo in their vehicles: children in the back seat,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts instructed CBS News. “It has been more than two years since I secured a provision of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law requiring NHTSA to update the standard for seatback safety, yet we still haven’t seen action.”
He known as on NHTSA “to hit the gas and take life saving action now on seatback safety.”
A CBS News investigation that started in 2015 uncovered the truth that the 1967 energy customary leaves automobile entrance seats vulnerable to collapsing in rear-end crashes, placing kids within the again seat at elevated threat of harm or dying.
Safety advocates estimate at the least 50 kids die annually in crashes involving a seatback collapse. Crash take a look at movies obtained through the course of CBS News’ investigation present how when automobiles are hit from behind, the front-seat driver and passenger seats of many autos can collapse backwards, launching the occupants into the backseat space.
NHTSA doesn’t at present have a full-time congressionally confirmed administrator.
In January, Markey and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut, instructed CBS News the company wanted to behave.
“I’m going to the president of the United States,” mentioned Blumenthal, who additionally helps updating the seatback security regulation. “And I’m going to say you don’t want this agency to be delaying and dallying when kids’ lives are at stake.”
Last November marked 13 years since 16-month previous Taylor Warner, was killed when the household minivan was rear-ended whereas at a cease signal. The drive of the crash brought on her father Andy Warner’s seat to break down backward, colliding with Taylor who was strapped in her automobile seat.
“I didn’t want my daughter to die in vain, and I’m going to go to the end of the earth to make sure that this is taken care of,” Andy Warner mentioned.
He and his spouse, Liz Warner, of Littleton, Colorado, advocate altering the seatback energy customary and hoped this 12 months the brand new regulation would go into impact.
“As a mom, it just makes me angry,” Liz Warner mentioned. “Every day, I put my kids in the car and I worry — to this day — ’cause you don’t know — it could happen again.”
Safety advocates, together with the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, D.C., are additionally annoyed concerning the missed deadline.
“It shouldn’t require an act of Congress to get them to act on regulation. We shouldn’t have to wait for people to die to take action,” National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy instructed CBS News.
She pointed on the market have been a number of suggestions made by the [National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), but “there hasn’t been action.”
“That tells me you’re not serious about safety,” she said. “So, get serious.”
While NHTSA is the nation’s top auto safety regulator, the NTSB is an independent federal agency focused on investigating civil transportation safety accidents and making recommendations to prevent future similar incidents.
Last November, 10 Democratic senators wrote to NHTSA seeking an update on the status of the 10 auto-safety improvements called for in the bill, including the seatback legislation.
NHTSA responded in a Dec. 22 letter to say it was “proceeding as expeditiously as possible to comply with the mandates and requirements of [the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law].”
“NHTSA plans to publish an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) in the coming months … and expects to complete the rulemaking after careful consideration of public input throughout the rulemaking process.”
Markey and Blumenthal have been joined within the letter by Democratic Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, requested by CBS News in December what he would do about NHTSA’s failure to fulfill the congressional deadline, responded, “When it comes to safety, the one thing that matters more than doing something in time for a congressional deadline is doing it right.”
He added, “NHTSA has to make tough choices every day, because literally everything they do involves life safety. They have limited resources to deal with dozens of overlapping requirements and mandates.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nhtsa-is-over-five-months-late-in-meeting-deadline-to-strengthen-car-seats/
