Mark Rosekind, NHTSA's new administrator, is pushing for a tripling of the agency's budget to ensure it can be an "enforcer" of safety rules.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to expand its abilities to ensure a 60 million recall year doesn’t happen again and it basically needs one thing above all else to make it happen: cash.
Avoiding a replay of a year that included events like General Motors’ recall of 2.6 million small cars due to a defective ignition switch that ultimately led to the deaths of at least 51 people and Takata’s faulty airbags that explode sending shrapnel into the cabins of vehicle, resulting in the recall of more than 10 million vehicles in the U.S. and five deaths requires manpower, the agency explains, and manpower costs money.
The agency, which is part of the Department of Transportation, operates on a miniscule budget and is actively backing the Obama Administration’s attempt to triple the funding for the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation from $10.7 million to $31 million.
“It’s no longer reasonable frankly to expect an office with 8 screeners and 16 defects investigators to adequately analyze 75,000 complaints a year,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters on a conference call earlier this week.
If the budget is approved, the number of ODI personnel would increase from 28 to 56.5 full-time equivalent positions. Those positions would include hiring a mathematician, two statisticians, 16 engineers and four investigators. The administration wants to add 57 people to a staff of more than 100.
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NHTSA officials say they want increase the rate at which recalls are completed using better data mining and monitoring tools. With the additional resources, the agency might be able to live up to newly appointed Administrator Mark Rosekind’s goal is for the agency.
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“NHTSA needs to be the enforcer,” he said during his confirmation process last year.
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Some of that leverage may come from another proposal about reforming the agency: increasing its power to levy fines from $35 million to $300 million for infractions.
Where did the $8/car NHTSA tax funds go to? That should be generating ~$120,000,000 per year to fund NHTSA.
With a fool in the White house all the government agencies are trying to play for more$$$
Reforming the agency is a better idea
work with what you have or be eliminated should be the directives ,
Have you actually looked at the miniscule size of their budget for handling investigations? On that basis, NHTSA is probably far more efficient than the best automaker. But it simply cannot keep up at a time when recalls have doubled. I don’t think government spending should go up randomly, but one should not simply assume, automatically, that no agency can justify the need for more cash. That wouldn’t work in big business and shouldn’t be expected to work here.
As for eliminating NHTSA? Really? The last few years have shown precisely why the agency is needed — and why it needs to have the resources to do the job right.
Paul E.
Paul, isn’t NHTSA receiving $8/car sold in North America? I thought this tax passed several years ago. If so then they should be receiving tons of money annually to fund their ops.