| Vehicle Safety Compliance Definitions |
Vehicle Safety Compliance DefinitionsFederal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards - The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, often pronounced "nit-suh") is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes. As part of its activities, NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing safety, theft-resistance, and fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, the latter under the rubric of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) system. NHTSA also licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the VIN system, develops the anthropomorphic dummies used in safety testing, as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information. The agency has asserted preemptive regulatory authority over Greenhouse gas emissions, but this has been disputed by such state regulatory agencies as the California Air Resources Board.
FMVSS Compliance - These Federal safety standards are regulations written in terms of minimum safety performance requirements for motor vehicles or items of motor vehicle equipment. These requirements are specified in such a manner "that the public is protected against unreasonable risk of crashes occurring as a result of the design, construction, or performance of motor vehicles and is also protected against unreasonable risk of death or injury in the event crashes do occur."
IIHS Compliance - Work-related roadway crashes are the leading cause of death from traumatic injuries in the U.S. workplace. They accounted for nearly 12,000 deaths between 1992 and 2000. Deaths and injuries from these roadway crashes result in increased costs to employers and lost productivity in addition to their toll in human suffering. Truck drivers tend to endure higher fatality rates than workers in other occupations, but concerns about motor vehicle safety in the workplace are not limited to those surrounding the operation of large trucks. Workers outside the motor carrier industry routinely operate company-owned vehicles for deliveries, sales and repair calls, client visits etc. In these instances, the employer providing the vehicle generally plays a major role in setting safety, maintenance, and training policy. As in non-occupational driving, young drivers are especially at risk. In the workplace, 45% of all fatal injuries to workers under age 18 between 1992 and 2000 in the United States resulted from transportation incidents. Insurance Institute Highway Safety - The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is a U.S. non-profit organization funded by auto insurers, established in 1959. It works to reduce the number of motor vehicle crashes, and the rate of injuries and amount of property damage in the crashes that still occur. It carries out research and produces ratings for popular passenger vehicles as well as for certain consumer products such as child car booster seats. NCAP Compliance - In 1940, the United States implemented automobile design legislation, concerning sealed beam headlamps, which had recently been invented and were an important safety advance at that time. This regulation, virtually unchanged for the next 40 years, set a pattern of using auto safety design legislation to freeze innovation at a point in time. In 1958, the UN established the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which began to promulgate what would eventually become UN's Economic Commission for Europe or ECE Regulations on vehicle design, construction, and safety performance. The United States declined to join the forum or adopt its (or any other) vehicle safety regulations at that time. However, vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards were legal to import into the United States. In 1965 and 1966, public pressure grew in the US 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 Public Law 89-563, Public Law 89-564, and Public Law 89-670 which created the U.S. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966). This legislation created several predecessor agencies which would eventually become the 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 came into effect, vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards but not the U.S. standards were no longer legal to import into the United States. The NHTSA was officially established in 1970 by the Highway Safety Act of 1970. In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act expanded NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs. |