Major Car-Safety Initiatives Coming Soon From NHTSA

The top U.S. car-safety administrator is urging the auto industry to work with regulators to develop safety technologies instead of waiting until the government mandates them.

“The era of the big recall is not a sign of progress,” said Mark Rosekind, chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Record civil penalties are not a signal of success. Too often it means Americans have given their lives.”

Instead, Rosekind wants automakers to pursue a “proactive safety culture” with NHTSA, which will reward automakers for bringing out safety technologies to reduce deaths on the road. In 2014, 32,675 people died on American roads.

Rosekind hinted at “history making” announcements on Thursday and Friday that will entail “the future of safety technology.”

Not that NHTSA’s boss is looking through these announcements through rose-colored glasses. How quickly technology can reach market is something that concerns him.

For instance, more than 10 automakers have signed up to make automatic emergency braking and forward-collision warning a standard feature—rather than something for just luxury cars or top trim levels of mainstream vehicles. But even the automakers’ most fervent backers of this plan said it would take seven or eight years for that goal to be reached.

Rosekind said that any automaker who can bring that standard technology to market ahead of that schedule will be rewarded “in lives saved and crashes deleted.”

“Not that we won’t rule-make if others are still struggling” to meet the standard, Rosekind said at the Automotive News World Congress at the 2016 Detroit auto show.

A goal of zero driving deaths is NHTSA’s ultimate long-term objective—something that clearly won’t happen before Rosekind’s term expires at the conclusion of the Obama administration.