Congress, in the NTMVSA itself, wrote that it was being created "[t]o provide for a
coordinated national safety program and establishment of
safety standards for motor vehicles in interstate commerce to
reduce accidents involving motor vehicles and to
reduce the deaths and injuries occurring in such accidents" (United States, Congress).
The Creation of the NHTSA
The widespread push for safety standards throughout the 1950s and ‘60s ushered in the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (NTMVSA), created to facilitate the reform of the automobile industry through the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Bureau (NHTSB), then Administration (NHTSA), though red tape and bureaucracy limited the agency’s potential.
National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act
60 years of crash testing at Mercedes-Benz.
Remarks at the Signing of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act, LBJ Presidential Library
"We are going to
cut down this
senseless loss of lives [due to automobile accidents]. We are going to cut down the
pointless injury. We are going to cut down the
heartbreak."
"Today, I will sign two bills into law: First, to
protect the driver--the Traffic Safety Act will ensure
safer, better-protected cars in the
event of an accident."
"Second, to achieve
safer driving--the Highway Safety Act will set up a
national framework for the State safety programs."
-President Lyndon B. Johnson in a speech about the necessity of the NTMVSA. Spoken on September 9th, 1966, the same date the NTMVSA was enacted.
The NTMVSA passed unanimously both in the House (317-0) and in the Senate (365-0) (Weingroff).
Why Regulation, Why Then?
In the 1950s and ‘60s, there was a growing push for government regulation with two distinct cultural-political causes: the idea that social ills such as poverty, pollution, and safety could be solved by liberal federal government involvement, and skepticism surrounding the at-the-time ineffectual attempts at public policy and reform of the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Power Commission, and Interstate Commerce Commission.
Virginia, Cath. Stylized Seal of the Federal Trade Commission
The NTMVSA was a reform to the automobile industry signed into law as a reaction to the rising death and injury totals across the United States by giving the federal government a framework with which automobile safety standards were created through the creation of the NHTSA, which went on to regulate the car industry and guarantee the safety of millions of Americans.