Bicyclists Have the Right to Safer Vehicles

The United States was a global leader when it created the world’s first New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) in the 1970s. Unfortunately, over the last two decades, the United States has fallen behind in testing new vehicles for safety. This year, in one of the first actions identified in USDOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, the NCAP is being updated and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is asking for comments on the proposed update.

This NCAP update is a long time coming, and the League has repeatedly asked for the safety of bicyclists to be considered in the program. The currently available proposed update does not include any testing for the safety of people who bike, despite our repeated efforts to bring attention to this oversight and the fact that other international NCAPs already test for the safety of people who bike.

Please join us in asking NHTSA to include testing new vehicles are tested for bicyclist safety, and specifically that cyclist-automatic emergency braking is tested, in the updated NCAP. You can take action using this button: 

In our comment requesting the inclusion of cyclist-AEB in NCAP, the League emphasizes that:

• Numerous studies provide evidence that cyclist-AEB addresses a safety need.
• Numerous system designs exist that can mitigate the safety problem.
• Cyclist-AEB provides the potential for safety benefits, according to numerous studies.
• Performance-based objective test procedures exist that can assess cyclist-AEB system performance.
• If it is not feasible to do so in this rulemaking, then cyclist-AEB should be included at the soonest possible opportunity.

The full comment is available below: