The bill touches on several issues relevant to the collision industry, including broadening the authority of the secretary of transportation to:
- Conduct motor vehicle safety
research, development, and testing programs and
activities, including new and emerging
technologies that impact or may impact motor
vehicle safety,
- Collect and analyze all types of motor vehicle and highway safety data and related information to determine the relationship between motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment performance characteristics.
Another section, titled “NHTSA Electronics, Software and Engineering Expertise,” discusses efforts to further explore green methods. This will include a council to research the inclusion of emerging lightweight plastic and composite technologies in motor vehicles to increase fuel efficiency, lower emissions, meet fuel economy standards, and enhance passenger motor vehicle safety through continued use of the administration’s Plastic and Composite Intensive Vehicle Safety Roadmap./p>
Finally, the bill requires that “Vehicle Event Data Recorders” include information regarding vehicle data recorders and privacy provisions specifications. Beginning with model year 2015, new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States are to be equipped with a vehicle event data recorder. The language includes that any data in an event data recorder, regardless of when the passenger motor vehicle in which it is installed was manufactured, is the property of the owner or lessee of the passenger motor vehicle in which the data recorder is installed. /p>
It also states that data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may not be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of the motor vehicle unless:
- a court authorizes retrieval of
the information in furtherance of a legal
proceeding,
- the owner or lessee consents to
the retrieval of the information for any
purpose, including the purpose of diagnosing,
servicing or repairing the motor vehicle,
- the information is retrieved
pursuant to an investigation or inspection
authorized under section 30166 of title 49,
United States Code, and the personally
identifiable information of the owner, lessee
or driver of the vehicle and the vehicle
identification number is not disclosed in
connection with the retrieved information,
- or the information is retrieved for the purpose of determining the need for, or facilitating, emergency medical response in response to a motor vehicle crash.