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Head of NHTSA Position Still Open, Safety Advocates Worried

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Lately, news about cars has talked a lot and loudly about the EPA, including who was the new EPA head, what the old EPA was doing just before Scott Pruitt took the position, what would happen if the EPA were just disbanded, what would happen if the funding disappeared, and the fate of the emissions regulations that the EPA put into place.


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However, you know who we haven’t heard about in forever? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, also known as the other half of CAFE regulations and our nation’s overseer of vehicle and road safety.

The reason for that, it seems, is that, if all the government agencies were sitting in a lecture hall and being called down one by one for their new agency heads, then the NHTSA would still be sitting in the back row idly doodling car crash tests on it notebook.

This situation is worrying to car safety advocates, as based on the nominations that the current administration has been making, some believe that the president may appoint someone from within the automotive industry itself.

Rosemary Shahn, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, told The Detroit News, “He has a penchant of appointing people who have been regulated and allowing them to dismantle agencies. You have all these companies who have been under investigations for safety violations recently. I wouldn’t be surprised if he appointed somebody from one of them.”


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One of these contentious appointments is the man we mentioned at the very beginning of this article, Scott Pruitt, who had sued the EPA several times over air quality regulations before his appointment as EPA head. Shahn said that she believed a likely candidate for the position would be GM CEO Mary Barra, although apparently no names are currently circulating Washington as to who may take the position of NHTSA head.

The appointment of any current industry CEO could be troubling, although given the current administration’s huge push for deregulation, any appointment to the position would likely follow that initiative.

News Source: The Detroit News