Washington — Safety advocates lauded new auto protection provisions included in the $286.4 billion highway bill signed Wednesday by President Bush during a scripted ceremony in Montgomery, Ill., near a plant that manufactures roadbuilding equipment.
The expansive spending bill, which Congress approved last month after a two-year struggle with the White House, provides for highway and transportation spending through 2009. While the focus of debate was spending, lawmakers included several safety provisions.
The new measures include:
Rollover prevention: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will start crash and rollover testing on 15-passenger vans. Previously, the agency only advised consumers on safe-driving techniques to prevent rollovers in the vans.
The safety administration will be required by April 2009 to implement a stability standard designed to prevent rollovers. A proposal for that standard is due by October 2006.
Power windows: To prevent people from being trapped or strangled by power windows, automakers must change window switches from the common rocker or toggle types to ones that must be pulled up or out. That change must be made by April 2007.
Passenger safety: The safety administration must implement tougher standards aimed at preventing drivers and passengers from being thrown from vehicles in accidents by July 2008. The new measures include sturdier door locks and stronger vehicle roofs.
Back-over deaths: The safety administration will begin collecting data on deaths and injuries in driveways and private roads and will research ways to reduce the number of children killed when drivers back over them. The agency must issue a report and recommendations by 2009.
Seat belts: States that enact tougher seat belt laws or reach 85 percent belt usage will receive financial grants.
Several public interest groups lauded the new measures, while the auto trade organization said it already was working to implement many of them.
"This legislation could produce the most significant safety enhancement since air bags were required in all vehicles in the 1991 highway legislation," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook, a former administrator with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Critics said the 1,000-page transportation bill was weighed down with pet projects to benefit nearly every member of Congress. The bill's price tag over six years was $30 billion more than Bush had recommended, but he said he was proud to sign it.
"Highways just don't happen," Bush said. "People have got to show up and do the work to refit a highway or build a bridge, and they need new equipment to do so. So the bill I'm signing is going to help give hundreds of thousands of Americans good-paying jobs."
The highway bill contains more than 6,371 special projects valued at more than $24 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
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