Industry asked NHTSA for a five-star crash-avoidance rating as the roadmap docket closed

Twelve comments entered NHTSA’s docket on the ten-year roadmap for the New Car Assessment Program on October 16, the day the comment period closed.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation supported dropping both tests the agency proposed to remove, the dynamic rollover resistance test and side airbag out-of-position testing, then asked for a form the roadmap does not specify. The roadmap already plans a crash-avoidance rating, with a final decision in 2026 and implementation from 2028, but names no format. The existing pass-or-fail mark, it wrote, “does not provide consumers with a meaningful way to compare the relative safety performance of new vehicles,” and NHTSA should adopt a five-star rating for crash avoidance. It also said the program is resource intensive, that testing can run to six weeks, and that costs can run to more than double those of similar programs.

Volvo Car Corporation endorsed that filing and asked NHTSA to publish the rating framework alongside its crashworthiness proposals rather than after them. Nissan North America asked for a two-month target between the end of testing and the issue of rating letters.

The driver-monitoring timetable drew objections from three directions. Seeing Machines, which said it has more than 8.2 million cars on the road carrying camera-based driver monitoring and occupant monitoring, asked the agency to keep distraction monitoring in the roadmap and not to delay drowsiness monitoring from model year 2032 to 2036. Consumer Reports called the same two decisions a severe step backward. The Automotive Safety Council, a trade association of forty safety-systems suppliers, wrote that the roadmap “shows how woefully behind NHTSA is to the rest of the world and is disappointing.”

Mazda North American Operations also endorsed the Alliance filing, and questioned whether adding speed assistance and driver visibility would duplicate what IIHS already rates.