Comment on Car safety experts at NHTSA, which regulates Tesla, axed by DOGE
Zron@lemmy.world 6 days agoThe NHTSA doesn’t actually certify anything.
They write the standards that vehicles and products must follow, but it’s up to the manufacturers to certify themselves as being compliant.
This explains how the cyber trucks, with no third party testing, are considered road legal in the US and basically no other country.
So Elon is not firing regulators that will deny his cars a certification, he’s firing regulators that decide what the requirements will be.
Thats so much worse.
Source for anyone interested. It’s a reply to a man wanting to import air bags, but the letter does give a nice overview of the laws.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The Cybertruck doesn’t violate any US laws, there’s nothing to disallow it.
And while OEMs do self certify, they get spot checked to ensure compliance. There’s too many new vehicles and variants for the NHSTA to ever check every single one in detail.
JordanZ@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’d love to see self certification go away entirely. They do the same thing with motorcycle helmets.
They release reports about those checks and a guy online aggregates them and they have a nearly 43.9% failure rate as of 2023. With helmets we can just grab something with the DOT rating and one of the other ratings that aren’t self certified. With cars that isn’t really an option.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Yikes that’s a bad rate.
It would be nice to get rid of it, but it will cost a lot more money that no one wants to pay even if it’s actually a good use of it.