National Transportation in Indian Country Conference

AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

It’s an honor to be here in the He-la River Indian Community. I’ve read a bit about this place, and, if folks are available, I’d look forward to learning more from you. I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity to spend just a bit of time in your community. I was just sworn in yesterday as NHTSA Administrator and I’m glad this is my first speech in this new role, and I’m glad I’m giving it here. I’ve learned over the years that leaders show their priorities by their presence. I do not intend to be a stranger on traffic safety issues on Tribal lands. I want to be available to help you with your vehicle and pedestrian safety problems and look forward to developing a relationship. Thank you to NTICC for inviting me today and to the representatives from so many Tribal communities gathered here. The role you play in reducing traffic fatalities in Indian Country is vital, and we are so grateful for all you do. 

I also want to thank U.S. DOT’s Assistant Secretary for Tribal Affairs, James Crawford, for leading our delegation here this week. He’s a good friend to our Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and we’re lucky to have him here working on these critical issues. So again, thank you on behalf of President Trump, Secretary Duffy, and NHTSA. It’s an honor to be with you today to talk about how we can strengthen our partnership for the vitally important work you do to save lives on Tribal lands.  

At NHTSA, road safety is our top priority and we are pursuing an aggressive agenda to save lives on a number of fronts. I want to touch briefly on a few areas of national focus and then I’ll turn to tribal issues specifically.

Behavioral 

On the behavioral safety side, we’re continuing to support our national education and high-visibility enforcement initiatives on the main risky driving behaviors: speeding, impaired, distracted, and unbelted driving. We’re also taking a number of new steps to bolster our behavioral safety programs. We’re re-engaging with law enforcement after several years of reduced engagement. We know we can’t fulfill our mission to save more lives without vigorous traffic enforcement, and we want the men and women of law enforcement to know that we support them and have their back. We’re fighting impaired driving by working to increase DUI prosecutions, encouraging wider use of technology to stop repeat offenders, and increasing training and use of oral fluid devices to combat drugged driving. We’re working to increase seat belt use by funding more nighttime belt enforcement, promoting the use of booster seats, and supporting tougher state laws on unbelted driving. 

This week is Child Passenger Safety Week, so we’re urging parents and caregivers to make sure their children are in the right car seat for their age and size. More broadly, we know that almost half of annual vehicle occupant fatalities are unbelted. This is shocking to me, in this day and age. The numbers are even higher in tribal communities, which I’ll say more about shortly. But wherever it’s happening, there’s just no excuse. Seat belts work, they save lives, and there’s no justification for not wearing them, every single time you drive. 

We’re innovating uses of data and technology to better leverage our partners in the State Highway Safety Offices to help them target local problem areas. We’re expanding our reach through a new National Partnership Network; and we’re increasing post-crash survival rates through expanded access to prehospital blood transfusion programs. 

Together, we want to help instill a culture of reduced risky behaviors so we can get our annual traffic fatality numbers way down. There’s no reason we can’t save many more lives if we all pull together.

CAFE & AVs 

Two top priorities for Secretary Duffy are in NHTSA’s jurisdiction: fuel economy – or CAFE – standards and Automated Vehicles. On CAFE standards, we’re re-evaluating them to bring the existing standards into compliance with laws that prohibit considering electric vehicle technologies. Both as a matter of law and policy, fuel economy standards should NOT be used to force the electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet. Our priority is removing barriers to more affordable and safer vehicles consumers want.  

On automated vehicles, we’ve established an AV Framework to allow for the safe testing and deployment of automated driving systems. This has already led to cutting red tape and removing disadvantages for domestic AV developers. And there is much more to come. We believe that when they are fully developed, AVs will be not only a source of future economic growth and technological advancement, but a major asset in the fight to make our roads safer for all.

Tribal Issues 

As has been discussed throughout this conference, Tribal lands have significant infrastructure needs when it comes to roads. As part of that, we want to work with you to consider how roadway safety concerns can be incorporated. Whether we’re talking about driving, walking, riding, or cycling, we want to be your partner in making your roads safer. In addition to the infrastructure needs, we are combatting what is a long-standing traffic safety crisis. And nowhere is this more true than in Indian Country. Far too many Native Americans are being injured and dying in traffic crashes throughout Indian Country. 

According to a NHTSA report issued last year, in 2021, Native Americans had by far the highest traffic fatality rate at 28.51 per 100,000 population. For context, across the United States, the rate was 13.02. The single most important thing to be protected in a crash is to wear a seat belt. Based on known belt use, 65% of Native American vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes in 2021 were not wearing seat belts, well above the national average. As mentioned, this is the easiest habit to break and we all need to push this message, including by being good examples in our communities and with our children—it's amazing how much they pick up on our own safety habits. Indian Country also saw the highest proportion of alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities in traffic crashes at 43%. 

Those are staggering numbers that we all want to see decline. I don’t want to pretend to have the answers for the safety issues within each unique sovereign tribal nation, but we want to make ourselves available to help you to address your unique concerns.

Programs & Resources

At NHTSA, our first step is to continue working with you to exchange information and expand access to resources, training, and technical assistance. Our regional teams visited several tribal communities across Indian Country and heard frequently about the need for more resources. We hear and understand that “one size fits all” solutions simply don’t work across all communities, but we have a set of tools that may be useful to consider as you look to solve your own Tribal safety concerns. 

For instance, with many Tribal lands on or near rural roads, long distances between communities and healthcare centers impacts response time for first responders and access to potentially lifesaving care after a crash. Bystander care programs like Stop the Bleed, empower anyone to save a life by learning basic actions to control severe bleeding in an injured person. This is especially critical in rural areas, where passengers or bystanders may be the only resource to aid an injured person before emergency medical services arrive. I encourage you all to check out the Stop the Bleed resources at this conference and in your surrounding area. We are also striving to engage with more tribal colleges and universities. We have supported safety events at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico and the Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. At both events, students, university leadership, state transportation stakeholders and several USDOT agencies collaborated to host interactive educational events for students to encourage them to buckle up, drive sober and drive distraction-free. 

We provide grant funds to tribes for traffic safety programs through two pipelines: the Bureau of Indian Affairs (which awarded more than $7.6 million in grant funds in 2025) and through State Highway Safety Offices (where 16 States awarded more than $12 million to 38 tribes in 2025). Every state’s highway safety office receives formula grant funding each year, and we encourage them to work with tribal communities to address your unique safety issues. In addition to working with the BIA and each other, consider reaching out to these state offices for additional resources and support. These funds are available for traffic safety purposes, such as combatting impaired driving, increasing seat belt and child safety seat use, supporting traffic law enforcement, and improving data collection to allow for better targeted safety activities. 

Here are a few examples of projects these funds have supported in Indian Country. In celebration of this year’s child passenger safety week, I’ll start there. Many Tribes are conducting important safety activities to get more children in the proper child safety seat. BIA has awarded 13 Tribes occupant protection grants for 2026 for child safety seats for distribution, to provide educational training and handouts to parents/guardians on the importance of proper car seat installation and keeping children properly restrained in a motor vehicle. Funds will also be used to assist with tribal grant administration to conduct car seat clinics, seatbelt surveys, car seat distributions, and attending child seat related training and conferences to maintain continuing education units (CEUs). In 2024, 491 car seats were distributed by 13 Tribes, including the Muscogee Creek Nation, Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. 

Here are a few examples of great specific work – and apologies to the many who are doing this work but aren’t mentioned: 

• The Northwest Portland Indian Health Board is conducting care seat check ups with the Grand RAWND and KO-KWELL Tribes;
• The Bay Mills Indian Community is holding child seat checks;  
• The Pueblo of Zia is conducting a child seat give away;
• In addition to distributing car seats, the Oglala Sioux Tribe is conducting a radio show to get the word out on occupant protection;
• The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is conducting a car seat check for their community. 

Grant-funded law enforcement projects continue to enforce seat belt usage on their roadways. In 2024, 25 tribes issued almost 2,800 seat belt citations and 674 child safety seat violations. While Native American seat belt utilization is still lower than the national U.S. rate, at 78% compared to 90%, there has been progress in Indian Country; seat belt use will continue to be one of the primary focus areas of the BIA as seat belt usage continues to rise. 

We also have a partnership with the Department of Transportation’s -Tribal Office to encourage Tribes to bring safety messaging to their communities. You can visit “tribalsafety.org,” to see all that is offered. Highway safety resources are based on crash, injury and fatality data. We encourage tribal communities to collect and report this data to get a better understanding of your traffic safety concerns. 

In that vein I also hope you’ll take a look at our Tribal Crash Reporting Toolkit, which we developed with the Federal Highway Administration and tribalsafety.org. This is a suite of tools designed to help tribes create or improve a traffic safety data program. These tools can help you establish a crash reporting system and track and analyze data to identify areas in need of attention. If your tribal authorities need assistance in deploying these tools, NHTSA has a Go Team ready to help—please feel free to reach out to us directly at our closest Regional Office.  The NHTSA booth in the exhibit hall can get you that information. We want to be a resource to you; we plan to build out training tailored to tribes to help you apply for federal grant money and to address traffic safety concerns on tribal lands. 

One last point is please don’t hesitate to drop by NHTSA’s booth if you haven’t already. We have materials on child passenger safety and preventing child heatstroke in hot cars, vehicle recalls with directions on how to check your VIN for a recall; safety messages; directions to a NHTSA website with resources tailored for NTICC attendees; evergreen social norming pull-up posters for booth set up; and NHTSA’s 2026 communications calendar to help you plan. NHTSA has a team of representatives from our headquarters and regional offices here so I hope that you will connect with them.  

I want to thank you for everything you’re doing to make our communities safer places to live. At NHTSA we want to protect the safety of every person on every road. Everyone deserves to arrive home to their loved ones safe and sound at the end of every day. And as always, NHTSA is here to help. If you have questions, need feedback, or want to connect with states or other tribes, please reach out to your regional office.  If you need help contacting the correct office, please stop by our booth and we’ll point you in the right direction. Together, we can help everyone drive, pedal, walk, ride and roll safely on and off tribal lands. 

Thank you very much.