NHTSA Safety Research Portfolio Public Meeting Opening Remarks

AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

Good morning, and I’m very pleased to welcome you to USDOT headquarters for NHTSA’s Safety Research Portfolio Public Meeting. 

This is the first in-person research public meeting since the pre-pandemic days, and I think it’s so important that we’re all together to share ideas and learn from one another. Increased technical engagement between NHTSA, industry, and safety experts is a priority of mine—to be a bit more outward facing than we’ve been in the past. Automotive technology is moving too fast not to have sustained technical engagement. We will have recordings available later, but I encourage you to take advantage of being in the same room and ask questions, connect with your fellow attendees, and take advantage of the networking opportunities. 

Over the next two days, you’ll learn about more than 60 projects underway at NHTSA in both the behavioral and vehicle safety spaces. 

Research is the foundation of our decision-making. We are a data-driven organization, and research provides the data and analyses we need to recommend a new behavioral countermeasure, develop vehicle safety test procedures, issue industry best practices and guidance, determine that a new safety regulation is necessary, or to amend an existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. 

NHTSA’s researchers do world class work, which informs everything we do. We also benefit from research conducted across the entire U.S. Department of Transportation, including from our colleagues in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology. 

I’ll start the first day of our public meeting with a very important announcement – one I am personally very excited to share with you. As you’re likely aware, NHTSA has been working for more than a decade on the new THOR 5th percentile female frontal crash test dummy. And while I’m the first to acknowledge that it took far longer than anyone would have liked, it was very important to make sure we got it right. NHTSA identified critical problems a few years ago that meant the dummy would not have been durable enough to meet our high standards. And a lot of work has happened since then to develop a state-of-the-art biofidelic dummy to expand our understanding of how crashes specifically affect women. 

So today, I’m pleased to share a major development with the THOR 5th female dummy. We’re releasing design specifications for this, the first-ever advanced female crash test dummy. This means that automakers can start purchasing the dummy and using it in tests, learning more about how it will perform before NHTSA formally adopts it for use in ratings and rulemakings. This will be the agency’s third dummy designed to test the safety of new vehicles for female drivers and passengers, expanding our family of crash test dummies. 

Both the new male and female THOR dummies are dramatically more advanced than previous dummies. Their bodies have much more humanlike responses to crash forces. They’ll also be able to collect far more information than we’ve ever had before. More than 150 high-tech sensors will enable significantly more measurements that will translate to injury risk values and allow manufacturers to design vehicles that better protect women occupants. 

It’s also critical that they’re durable enough to sustain repeated high-velocity crashes without breaking. Sensors may need to be replaced, but the dummy itself must be capable of repeated crash tests without damage. 

We’re very proud of our work on this advanced crash test dummy. Getting this dummy right and prioritizing the safety of women are incredibly important to me and the entire U.S. Department of Transportation. We’re publishing new documents today with technical specifications for the dummy, and we encourage everyone to review them and learn more about this incredible piece of technology. This is a crucial step toward the full adoption of this new dummy and learning even more about how to design vehicles to better protect female drivers and passengers. 

Safety drives everything we do at NHTSA and understanding how women’s bodies react in a crash is critical to improving vehicle safety and saving lives. The data show that men and women have different injury risks in vehicle crashes. Using various dummies representing a wide range of occupants of different sizes has been critical to lowering the differential in safety outcomes. 

While this differential exists, and the new THOR 5th female will help reduce it further, a recent NHTSA study shows that the relative fatality risk difference between women and men has been significantly reduced for newer versus older vehicles—from over 18 percent to under 6 percent. 

That’s because newer vehicles are safer. And getting more people into newer cars is incredibly important to improving traffic safety. But the cost of vehicles has risen so high, that new cars have become a luxury item unattainable to the average American family, and the average age of a vehicle on our roads today is about 13 years old. That means more and more families are priced out of new vehicles with the latest safety technologies. 

One of my top priorities is doing what we can to reduce the costs of regulation, while maintaining or improving vehicle safety—which will make vehicles more affordable to American families, enabling them to benefit from modern safety advancements. 

We’re doing this by examining our regulations to ensure they meet the need for safety without imposing undue costs or design restrictions that hamper innovation. We want our regulatory requirements to be modernized so that they are technology neutral performance requirements—as the Vehicle Safety Act intends—enabling automakers to meet or exceed those requirements in innovative ways.   

I want automakers to design and build the best and safest vehicles the world has ever seen, and I also want to ensure that people have the choice to buy the type of vehicle that’s best for them, not one forced on them by a government mandate. 

In addition to vehicle safety, we’re also working to address the choices made by drivers and passengers. Every year nearly half of vehicle occupants killed in crashes chose not to wear a seatbelt. Close to a third of traffic fatalities involved a driver who chose to drive impaired by alcohol. About 30 percent of traffic fatalities involved a driver who chose to speed, reducing reaction times and massively increasing crash forces. And far too many involved drivers who chose to drive distracted. 

This happens year after year, so we’re doubling down on successful countermeasures to deter risky driving behaviors, as well as renewing our partnerships with law enforcement to help identify and stop dangerous drivers. 

But when crashes do happen, effective post-crash care can make all the difference in whether someone survives. We’re supporting our nation’s emergency medical services personnel and exploring promising strategies, including prehospital blood transfusions. Over the next two days, you’ll learn more about our behavioral research projects underway. 

And finally, we’re looking ahead to the future of transportation. Advanced technologies and automated vehicles hold the promise of changing the way we all live and travel. Providing room for continued safety innovation is a hallmark of the Vehicle Safety Act and is critical to enabling safety improvements in the fleet of tomorrow. 

Today’s presentations will focus on our work on advanced safety technologies and driving automation safety. And I invite you to stay for this afternoon’s ADS workshop, which starts at 1:30 p.m. I’ll have more to share with you then about our work in the ADS space and how we’re supporting both innovation and safety.

You’ll also be able to participate in roundtable discussions – another reason why holding this event in person is so valuable.

With that, thank you so much for being here and for your interest in NHTSA’s safety mission. And now, I’ll turn it over to Cem to lead you into day one of our Safety Research Portfolio Public Meeting. Thank you very much.