Analysis by Daniel Stern, DVN Chief Editor
Last week’s article about regulatory lag in the U.S. pointed to a finding that at least 13 auto safety regulations are badly behind schedule. Now, there are new official findings that NHTSA doesn’t work.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an agency of the U.S. Government’s Department of Transportation. That department has an Office of the Inspector General, which periodically audits DOT agencies’ work, effectiveness and efficacy to see how well it measures up to what it should be. Now the Inspector General has filed and published their latest audit of NHTSA, and it is a damning report.
Among its findings: NHTSA is unable to issue or update Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; the agency cannot act on petitions or complete investigations within the legally prescribed time limit, the agency has no standard process for evaluating petitions (nor other crucial key processes), the agency hasn’t implemented agreed-upon recommendations arising from the Inspector General’s 2011 audit.
This new audit adds ugliness to an already-disturbing portrait painted by previous audits in 2018, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2011. That tracks with what we see in our corner of the automotive world’s topography: audits over the last decade reveal major, structural brokenness at NHTSA…and the whole of the vehicle lighting community feels the dull ache and toothgrinding gritchment of over a decade’s worth of NHTSA inaction on ADB. Could it be other than cause and effect?
We hasten to emphasise that the shortcomings and faults described in these audit reports are institutional and systemic, not individual or personal. They are problems with NHTSA, the agency—not problems with the people who work there. There are many thoughtful, skilled, talented, knowledgeable, passionate people at NHTSA, and they valiantly carry on doing their best in a situation made terribly difficult by the damaged condition of the organization as a whole.
