Through 2024, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA” or the “Agency”) continued its efforts to improve safety statistics and reduce the number of annual fatalities. After trending upward between 2014 and 2021, the annual fatality number — the banner data point for NHTSA each year — has trended down from a recent high of approximately 43,230 deaths in 2021 to approximately 40,990 deaths in 2023.[1] While recognizing the positive trend in the topline number, NHTSA data indicates that fatalities of vulnerable road users (pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bicyclists) have been trending upward for over a decade.[2] In light of this trend, NHTSA continues to develop its approach to automated technologies, with particular focus on protections for vulnerable road users. Additionally, NHTSA made strides in collecting and analyzing data, paving the road for a robust regulatory agenda in 2025. With a new Trump administration leading NHTSA beginning in 2025, NHTSA may be poised to return to the more aggressive posture of removing regulatory barriers to advanced vehicle technologies and automation.
2024 Regulatory Trends – Regulations for Advanced Technologies Leap Forward
The Agency remains focused on developing regulatory and enforcement tools to meet emerging vehicle technologies, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), automated driving systems (ADS), and automated vehicles (AVs), as well as other advanced technologies, such as technologies for detecting impaired driving. Significantly, NHTSA adopted a new Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) 127 that, beginning on September 1, 2029, requires all light vehicles to be equipped with automatic emergency braking (AEB).
As with NHTSA’s recent amendment to its lighting standard, FMVSS 108, to permit adaptive driving beam (ADB) headlamps, NHTSA’s safety standards have entered the world of regulating technologies that rely on perception technologies, which include sensors, cameras, lidar, and radar. Because these perception technologies serve as the foundation of technologies like ADAS and ADS, NHTSA’s experience in developing the performance requirements and test protocols for ADB and AEB are likely to heavily influence the development of any future safety standards for advanced technologies. A joint rulemaking underway between NHTSA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) that would adopt AEB performance requirements for heavy vehicles will provide further insights into how NHTSA will seek to keep its safety standards objective and technology-neutral in the face of vehicle systems that take an increasingly active role in critical portions of the dynamic driving task (DDT). Importantly, the ADB and AEB test procedures evaluate the respective system’s ability to perceive while operating the vehicle on a track.
Looking at NHTSA’s regulatory agenda, current and upcoming rulemakings provide additional insight into the fairly comprehensive approach NHTSA is taking with respect to emerging technologies. The Agency’s ongoing rulemaking activities include:
- Minimum Performance Standards for Lane Departure Warning and Lane-Keeping Assist Systems;
- Facilitating New Automated Driving System Vehicle Designs for Crash Avoidance Testing;
- Advanced Impaired Driving Technology;
- Exemption and Demonstration Framework for Automated Driving Systems;
- Pedestrian Safety Global Technical Regulation (protections for pedestrian impacts with vehicle hoods);
- Assessment of FMVSS Test Procedures to Account for New Vehicle Designs;
- Updating the Event Data Recorder (EDR) Standard;
- Considerations for Telltales, Indicators and Warnings in Vehicles Equipped with Automated Driving Systems;
- Non-Pneumatic Tires;
- Alternatives (i.e., Cameras) to Rearview Mirrors;
- Automatic Shutoff and Keyless Ignition Systems;
- Framework for Automated Driving Systems Safety; and
- Incident Reporting Requirements for Automated Driving Systems and Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.
These rulemakings, coupled with the track-test procedures for ADB and AEB, will provide key insights into how NHTSA may approach safety standards for technologies like lane-keeping and more advanced ADAS and ADS technologies. The industry should pay close attention to these test protocols and use lessons from these rulemakings to guide comments on future rulemakings.
Improvements in Data Collection and Review Have Become Valuable Tools for NHTSA’s Enforcement Efforts
Over the past decade, NHTSA has been steadily developing additional tools (formal and informal) for evaluating potential safety and compliance issues. Broadly, these tools include regular informal meetings with manufacturers, automated reviews of recall-related documents to ensure timely and complete information, leveraging VIN deciphering information to build a relational database that ties together various data sources (like vehicle owner questionnaires (VOQ), early-warning data (EWR), and responses to information requests), and wider use of standing general orders (SGOs) and consent orders, to name a few. In 2024, NHTSA continued developing these tools. NHTSA updated its manufacturer communications portal and now requires that all communications subject to 49 CFR Part 579.5 be submitted through the improved portal. In August 2024, NHTSA launched its “Safety Defect Investigations” portal, which the Agency will use to manage the large volumes of information collected during defect investigations. By standardizing the submission of this information, NHTSA hopes to more efficiently request and collect information, facilitate the Agency’s review of this information, and accelerate the release of non-confidential information to NHTSA’s public investigation files.
These data collection tools allow NHTSA to implement more robust auditing tools that have been guiding enforcement actions. Compliance teams should familiarize themselves with these newly updated reporting systems to further reduce their company’s compliance risk. With these expanded data tools in place, it is increasingly more critical that manufacturers ensure all data submitted to NHTSA is complete and accurate.
2025 and the Road Ahead
In 2025 — as NHTSA continues these enforcement and regulatory efforts — the automotive industry should anticipate a heightened emphasis on providing complete and timely reports to the Agency. The Agency’s particular interest in policing the scope of recalls is likely to continue through its active monitoring of owner complaints (submitted to NHTSA via VOQs) and manufacturer-submitted service bulletins, and liberal use of informal inquiries (usually emails) and formal information requests by the Agency’s expanded team of investigators. Manufacturers should also anticipate NHTSA’s continued use of SGOs to gather field information, regardless of the upcoming change in presidential administrations.
To reduce enforcement risk, manufacturers must ensure that their internal safety evaluation and reporting procedures are up-to-date and that key personnel maintain proper training on current regulatory requirements and systems/portals used by NHTSA. A robust compliance process should include comprehensive reviews of potential safety issues and, where applicable, conformity to safety standards and other regulatory obligations (such as EWR requirements), as well as ensuring timely and complete responses to NHTSA.
Manufacturers, particularly in the ADAS, ADS, and advanced technologies sectors, should also have processes in place to monitor regulatory developments and, where appropriate, participate in the rulemaking process, preferably supported by data and similar objective information. Because NHTSA has not updated its automated technologies and cybersecurity policies in several years, the Agency will likely update these policies, particularly in light of the increasing numbers of vehicles equipped with advanced technologies. During the first Trump administration, NHTSA and the U.S. Department of Transportation focused on removing barriers to developing and deploying ADAS, ADS, and advanced technologies. Public statements from the incoming Trump administration’s transition include a focus on increasing efficiency, decreasing bureaucracy, and seeking to remove barriers to deploying new technologies.
The incoming Trump administration will likely follow a similar focus, with a renewed push to coordinate federal, state, and local laws to help facilitate deployment of automated vehicles and propel NHTSA further forward in its efforts to remove regulatory barriers to emerging vehicle technologies.
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[1] See, “Crash Stats: Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January-June) of 2024,” DOT HS 813 633 (Sep. 2024).
[2] See, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) “Fatality Facts 2022” analyzing trends. Available here: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#:~:text=Overview,et%20al.%2C%202023) (last checked Nov. 4, 2024). Note that estimates for 2023 indicate pedestrian fatalities decreased between 2022 and 2023 by approximately 2%. See, “Crash Stats: Early Estimates of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities by Sub-Categories in 2024,” DOT HS 813 581 (May 2024).
