Dr. Steven Scott Cliff, nominee to be administrator of the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Protection Management, testifies all the way through a Senate Trade, Science and Transportation Committee affirmation listening to in Russell Development on Thursday, December 16, 2021.
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The Division of Transportation stated on Friday that Steven Cliff, the top of the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Protection Management, plans to depart the company in September after 3 months within the best process.
Ann Carlson, the manager recommend of NHTSA, will take over Cliff’s tasks, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg informed CNBC in a commentary.
Cliff, who was head of NHTSA in early June, is leaving to helm the California Air Sources Board, a local weather company involved in lowering air air pollution within the state. CARB introduced on Friday that Cliff used to be appointed as its subsequent CEO, after Richard Corey, the prior CEO, retired on the finish of June.
All through his tenure with NHTSA, Cliff labored on new gas economic system requirements, and new car protection laws which can be supposed to extend protection for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. As extra complex applied sciences had been followed by means of automakers, the company is increasingly more coping with issues in regards to the protection of electrical car batteries, and device that is controlling vehicles.
Car protection activists, together with Ralph Nader, had been calling on NHTSA to prevent Tesla from trying out unfinished motive force help device with abnormal consumers on public U.S. roads as a result of how steadily it malfunctions.
Cliff led the company to factor a “status normal order,” which mandates that automakers supply NHTSA with knowledge on deadly and different important collisions that concerned their vehicles and complex motive force help programs (ADAS), or extra technologically refined computerized riding programs.
ADAS choices to be had in client vehicles come with Tesla’s Autopilot, Complete Self-Using and FSD Beta programs, Ford’s Blue Cruise and Cadillac’s SuperCruise. None of them make vehicles protected to be used with out an attentive human in the back of the wheel. Computerized riding programs are featured in robotaxis being advanced by means of Waymo, Cruise and others.
Cliff used to be nominated in October by means of President Joe Biden to guide the NHTSA after serving as deputy administrator since February 2021.
Secretary Buttigieg thanked Cliff for his carrier on the company “and his paintings to give protection to the lives of the American folks by means of strengthening the security of motor cars and lowering their emissions.”
NHTSA declined to percentage any longer information about the instances of Cliff’s departure.
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