By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday is set to hold a confirmation hearing on President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an agency without a permanent leader for nearly five years.
The Democratic president’s nominee is Steven Cliff, a former California Air Resources Board official who since February has served as NHTSA’s deputy administrator. Cliff has been a key figure in the Biden administration’s proposed rewrite of vehicle fuel economy standards through 2026 and is overseeing its safety investigation of electric car maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc.
NHTSA asked Tesla in September why it has not issued a recall to address software updates made to its Autopilot driver-assistance system for its cars. The agency also has held recent discussions with Tesla about why it allows video games to be played on a touch screen mounted in front of the dashboard and its plans to replace cameras in some vehicles.
NHTSA in August opened a formal safety inquiry into Tesla’s Autopilot system in 765,000 U.S. vehicles after a series of crashes involving Tesla models and emergency vehicles.
The agency, part of the U.S. Transportation Department, faces a backlog of pending auto safety regulations and has not had a Senate-confirmed administrator since January 2017, the month when Republican former President Donald Trump took office. Prior to Cliff’s selection in October, there had not been a nominee for NHTSA’s top job since 2019.
NHTSA in August proposed reversing the Trump administration’s rollback of Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has experienced a sustained increase in traffic deaths that NHTSA attributes to impaired driving, speeding, a failure to wear seatbelts and other unsafe behavior.
U.S. traffic deaths soared by 18.4% in the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period a year earlier, representing the most deadly first half of a year on American roads since 2006, NHTSA said. It was the largest six-month increase recorded since the current tracing system has been in use since 1975.