Two safety groups told NHTSA its proposed rating roadmap drops distraction monitoring

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety filed comments on NHTSA’s revised ten-year roadmap for the New Car Assessment Program on October 13 and October 14, entering the docket days before the comment period closes on October 16. The roadmap was published on August 17 in docket NHTSA-2026-1651.

IIHS, signing through senior vice-president for vehicle research Jessica Jermakian, wrote that the roadmap “delays the implementation of drowsiness monitoring while completely removing distraction monitoring.” The agency’s own notice bears that out: it said driver monitoring for drowsiness was now anticipated to enter the program with model year 2036, and that the distraction topic was not included in the proposed roadmap while the agency gathered the information needed to support it.

On intelligent speed assistance the two accounts diverge. IIHS placed the technology on the roadmap in 2033. NHTSA’s notice set out a later timetable than that: research completing in 2031 and implementation into the program in 2035, with the final decision falling across 2033 and 2034. The roadmap also carried a one-year delay to the rating system for crash avoidance technologies and a two-year delay to updated crashworthiness, vulnerable-road-user and overall ratings.

Advocates, signing through senior research director Shaun Kildare and general counsel Peter Kurdock, objected to the same extended target dates and cited 39,254 road deaths in the United States in 2024. It did not oppose either of the two tests NHTSA proposed to remove, the dynamic rollover resistance test and side airbag out-of-position testing. IIHS separated them. It accepted dropping the rollover test, since an equivalent regulatory requirement already covers the hazard, but asked the agency to keep the side airbag evaluation or put an alternative in its place, nothing else in the framework having replaced it.