History
In 1965 and 1966, public pressure grew in the U.S. to increase the safety of cars, culminating with the publishing of Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader, an activist lawyer, and the National Academy of Sciences' "Accidental Death and Disability—The Neglected Disease of Modern Society".
In 1966, Congress held a series of highly publicized hearings regarding highway safety, passed legislation to make installation of seat belts mandatory, and enacted Pub.L. 89-563, Pub.L. 89-564, and Pub.L. 89-670 which created the U.S. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966. This legislation created several predecessor agencies which would eventually become NHTSA, including the National Traffic Safety Agency, the National Highway Safety Agency, and the National Highway Safety Bureau. Once the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) came into effect, vehicles not certified by the maker or importer as compliant with US safety standards were no longer legal to import into the United States.
NHTSA was officially established in 1970 by the Highway Safety Act of 1970 (Title II of Pub.L. 91-605, 84 Stat. 1713, enacted December 31, 1970, at 84 Stat. 1739). In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act (Pub.L. 92-513, 86 Stat. 947, enacted October 20, 1972) expanded NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs. Since then, automobiles have become far better in protecting their occupants in vehicle impacts. The number of deaths on American highways hovers around 40,000 annually, a lower death rate per vehicle-mile travelled than in the 1960s.
NHTSA has conducted numerous high-profile investigations of automotive safety issues, including the Audi 5000/60 Minutes affair, the Ford Explorer rollover problem and the Toyota: Sticky accelerator pedal problem. The agency has introduced a proposal to mandate Electronic Stability Control on all passenger vehicles by the 2012 model year. This technology was first brought to public attention in 1997, with the Swedish moose test.
NHTSA's activities provide today's consumers with a great deal of auto safety information that was not generally available before the agency existed.
Read more about this topic: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)