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NHTSA - A Colorado State Open Thread, 3/3/2025 [1]

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Date: 2025-03-03

I’m back and looking forward to being in Colorado for awhile. The Colorado State Open Thread series is dedicated to those with an interest in our square(ish) state which is red on three sides and blue in the most populous middle. I would like to thank Kosack John in Denver for helping to cover the series while I was gone, and on the days we had no volunteers, I hope someone may think that they missed it enough to volunteer to write one the next time I am away (likely in May or June).

While I was over in Thailand, I was struck by the importance of one of the relatively under-the-radar government agencies that I have not heard much about in the DOGE wars. Now that I look it up, since it’s an agency that affects Elon Musk and Tesla, and has been investigating the Tesla self-driving problems, of course it must suffer staffing cuts.

NHTSA is the acronym for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is responsible for safety on the nation’s road system. Musk couldn’t possibly think cutting staffing at that agency resulting in potentially more safety issues, like crashes, failing infrastructure, unsafe vehicles, problems with software like the self-driving software that is being tested in more and more vehicles and where big companies are anxious to get revenue from their big investments in the technology? Oh, I see where the problem comes in. Since NHTSA hasn’t signed off Musk being able to release his software freely into the wilds of America’s highways and byways because of inconvenient things like unexpected deviations, parts falling off vehicles, crashes and fires that are nearly impossible to put out, the best way apparently is to stop the reporting and investigations, not to make better software and vehicles.

In addition to investigations into Tesla’s partially automated vehicles, NHTSA has mandated that Tesla and other automakers using self-driving technology report crash data on vehicles, a requirement that Tesla has criticized and that watchdogs fear could be eliminated. The staff reductions have come through a combination of firings, buyouts and layoffs. The agency noted in its statement that the Biden administration had expanded its payroll, suggesting the smaller staff was sufficient to carry out its mission. “Even with these modest efficiencies, NHTSA is still considerably larger today than it was four years ago,” the statement said. “We have retained positions critical to the mission of saving lives, preventing injuries, and reducing economic costs due to road traffic crashes.”

I began thinking about NHTSA when I was helping someone drive on Thailand’s highways just after dark. Thailand has some modern roadways, with good pavement and lighting. Thailand also has many roads with narrow lanes, poor or no lighting and one big problem that NHTSA seems to have mostly fixed here in the US. Drivers who do not comply with the standards of Thailand’s road systems let alone those of a country like the US.

The areas of Thailand we were driving through were very similar to many rural areas of Colorado. Two lane roads were being used by many different types of vehicles like here in the US, especially trucks of all sizes, cars and motorcycles but with a few different ones as well. These different ones are used primarily on the farms, including motorcycles with side wheels for baskets, tractors and something called an E-tak which has (from front to back) the engine of a tractor, then the front two wheels of a tractor, and then a short space for sitting in front of the rear wheels, above which is mounted either gears for tilling or otherwise work the soil or a basket for transporting goods. These rarely travel more than five miles per hour. Thailand’s also got many motorcycles of various vintages, so they can be moving at 15-25 mph for scooters and old bikes on up to 60 or more, but then the quality of the roads provides limits as well.

In the US, often traffic moves as fast as, or faster than, the speed limit. In Thailand, traffic moves at the speed the vehicle is capable of. If the vehicle is a car or motorcycle, it can move at or above the speed limit, but often there are these E-taks moving 5mph trying to stay as close to the side of the road as conditions allow. Also many times there are overloaded trucks which might normally operate around the speed limit but once loaded down with rocks, bales of hay or other very heavy loads, even the big trucks may be struggling to get above 10mph.

Hard to see tail lights or other safety measures.

We saw many, many vehicles without lights on, or maybe a single taillight. Only rarely was there a reflective sign like the upside down triangle for “Slow moving vehicle” and sometimes we’d only see the shadow of a truck looming up in the darkness with no lighting and moving at 5mph and we were traveling at 40 or more mph. Even the idea of slow traffic moving in the slow lane wasn’t a common practice.

With all these road hazards, especially as farmers were working until dark and THEN bringing the harvest in the trucks to market or home, we had a genuinely dangerous drive. I have never had that much of an issue in Colorado’s farming areas and I believe it’s because of the dedicated work of people who work for agencies like NHTSA, all the rural police and sheriffs who make sure the traffic laws recommended by NHTSA are followed and also the relative wealth of US farmers who can afford to fix broken lights, put proper signage on their vehicles and afford vehicles that meet safety standards instead of just barely making it down the road.

Oh, and the truck in the top picture? I don’t gather that there are many hard-and-fast rules followed in decorating one’s truck. Plenty of decorations obscuring views, lights of different colors lining the tops of the cabs (green was popular, but blues and reds were also present), and some trucks had veritable Christmas tree lighting packages with spinning designs and worse.

Please remember that it’s not just the big, fancy agencies that Musk and Trump are after. They’re after anything that might make a rule or regulation that might cross paths with any MAGA and so hinder the freedumb of the libertarians and anarchists who make up much of the MAGA movement. If any law or regulation inconveniences one MAGA-ite, even though it might save a dozen or more lives, it seems now that it’s subject to being canceled or just not allowed to be enforced. It’s the opposite of shared responsibility upon which this country was founded.

I know there’s a great deal that went on in Colorado while I was gone; I will get back up to speed and start spreading more news and views from our great state. This weekend, I will be going down to the Alamosa area to see the Sandhill Crane migration (along with other birds heading north). If anyone is planning on being in the area Friday or Saturday, drop me a note in the comments down below. Until then, the floor is yours...

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