National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, often pronounced "nit-suh") is an agency of the Executive Branch of the  U.S. Government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”.As part of its activities, NHTSA is charged with safety performance and fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, the latter called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). It also licenses vehicle manufacturers and vehicle importers, allows or blocks importation of vehicles, safety-related vehicle parts (including seatbelts, airbags, safety glass, side airbags, brakes, accelerators, bumpers, tires, doorlocks, odometers) vehicle-theft prevention including vehicle identification number (VIN), anthropormorphic dummies used in testing, vehicle test procedures, insurance cost information, emissions controls, and child restraint seats. It has asserted preemptive regulatory control over Greenhouse gas emissions but this has been disputed by many state regulatory agencies including California Air Resources Board.
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The Administration was established by the Highway Safety Act of 1970 (23 U.S.C. 401 note). The Administration was established to carry out a congressional mandate to reduce the mounting number of deaths, injuries, and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes on the Nation's highways and to provide motor vehicle damage susceptibility and ease of repair information, motor vehicle inspection demonstrations and protection of purchasers of motor vehicles having altered odometers, and to provide average standards for greater vehicle mileage per gallon of fuel for vehicles under 10,000 pounds (gross vehicle weight). (OFR1)