Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Time for Biden administration to jump-start traffic safety regulations

For a motorist, putting off safety updates on your car — like getting brake work or replacing balding tires — can pose a lethal threat.

The same goes when the government delays the adoption of new standards for vehicle safety and traffic safety. Amid this inaction, there’s a risk of fatalities that might have been avoided had the new regulations been fully adopted.

An Associated Press analysis revealed that 13 federal safety rules are years late in going into effect, including several that may have saved lives had they been put into effect.

Those include a requirement for cars to be fitted with a safety belt warning device alerting drivers to unbuckled passengers in the rear seat. In 2012, Congress passed legislation directing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to adopt the requirement by 2015.

But nine years after former President Barack Obama signed the bill, NHTSA still hasn’t put it in place. It’s become mired in a cumbersome approval process, pushback from auto manufacturers and a maddening tendency by the NHTSA to simply blow off deadlines.

Meanwhile, there have been tens of thousands of deaths of unrestrained passengers, many of whom were children who were ejected from back seats in accidents.

Other overdue regulations spotlighted by the AP include stepped-up side-impact standards for child car seats and stronger anti-ejection safeguards on buses, both of which were due in 2014. Another is a requirement for smart car headlights that use sensors to automatically dim the lights for oncoming traffic. Those standards are incomplete three years after they were supposed to be fully in effect.

This isn’t to say federal regulators and the auto industry have made no progress in improving safety. For instance, at the urging of regulators, automakers have begun fitting new vehicles with automatic emergency braking technology and have pledged to add electronic alerts to all new cars by 2025 to prevent children from inadvertently being left in hot vehicles.

In several cases, the delays trace to the Trump administration’s irresponsible undermining of safety regulations across the board — traffic protections, environmental protections, workplace protections, etc. In gutting regulatory agencies, eliminating a staggering number of federal safety requirements and creating an environment in which government employees faced intimidation and retribution for doing their jobs, the administration put the brakes on traffic safety and in other areas.

But while advocates hoped the situation would change with the changeover to the Biden administration, that hasn’t happened.

“You have a Biden administration (that) seems across the board more interested in acting in a regulatory fashion than the previous administration,” said Jason Levin, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, to the AP. “That’s why there’s so much excitement, but also quite frankly frustration that things aren’t moving with a greater sense of urgency.”

That frustration is justified, given a recent national trend in traffic deaths. Roadway fatalities spiked in 2020 to 38,680, the highest level since 2007, even though roadway miles were down sharply amid pandemic-related closures of businesses, workplaces and schools. Traffic experts said the pandemic triggered a rise in aggressive driving among Americans, including speeding, higher incidence of impaired driving, and a decline in use of safety belts.

Unfortunately, it appears the problem isn’t subsiding. Traffic fatalities were up 10.5% in the first quarter of 2021 over the same period last year, leaving 8,730 people dead.

The situation is even worse in Nevada, where there were 208 traffic fatalities statewide from January through July this year, a 31% increase over the first seven months of 2020.

Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, called the surge in accidents a “car crash epidemic” and told the AP, “We need a call to action.”

Indeed. The Biden administration needs to move more aggressively in putting overdue regulations into effect, and congressional lawmakers need to dial up pressure on the administration to finish the work they themselves started.

And we, the public, must do our part by driving more cautiously, being considerate of other road users (especially pedestrians and bicyclists), putting a stop to our distracted driving, and generally realizing that motor vehicles are deadly weapons and must be treated with respect — aggressive driving has no place on our streets and highways.

Amid the skyrocketing deaths on the nation’s roads and highways, this is no time to be stuck in neutral on traffic safety.