NHTSA

Will U.S. regulators let thousands of U.S. residents die preventable deaths just to save fleet operators a few dollars?

America's traffic safety record is going from bad to worse -- and federal transportation officials aren't speaking up about it.

It's never safe to drive 115 mph on public roadways. Why do we allow companies to sell millions of cars that can reach those speeds or higher?

The ex-CDOT chief says the feds' Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety model, which calls for targeting crash and crime "hot spots" could save lives and help prevent police profiling

Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report showing that all traffic fatalities increased significantly on U.S. roads from 2014 to 2015, by 7.7 percent to reach 35,200, the worst death toll since the 2008 economic crash. Streetsblog USA's Angie Schmitt pointed out that, while Americans drove 3.5 percent more during this period, that's "not enough to explain the rising death toll." U.S. pedestrian and bike fatalities rose even more during that period, by 10 and 15 percent, respectively.

Traffic fatalities in America hit a seven-year high in 2015, with pedestrians and cyclists accounting for a disproportionate share of the alarming increase, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

How did more than 30,000 annual motor vehicle deaths become something that most Americans accept as normal? A new paper by Boston University professor Itai Vardi tries to answer that question.

Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was killed in Minneapolis while trying to cross an intersection with no crosswalk or traffic signal on a 40-mph road. One witness speculated that Steeber must have had a "death wish."

When David Strickland announced last month that he was stepping down as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, he didn't give any clues about where he might be going. The news came out this week: The nation's top auto regulator is going to be a lobbyist at a law firm that deals with auto regulation, raising concerns that he's going through the revolving door between the public and private sector, more to the benefit of industry than the public.