S. 1474: Vehicle Safety Research Act of 2025

S. 1474, the Vehicle Safety Research Act of 2025, would formally establish the Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety, or PARTS, at the Department of Transportation. The program already exists at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but this bill would put it into statute and require the Secretary of Transportation to create a program charter within 180 days of enactment. That charter must be developed with current participants and an outside contractor.

The core tradeoff is simple: automakers and other participants can voluntarily share traffic safety data for research, but they keep ownership and control of that data. The bill says the data may be accessed only by a contracted "external organization" — defined as a nonprofit or institution of higher education with experience doing independent research for federal agencies or running federally funded research and development centers. Data sharing between participants is banned unless the charter or a cooperative agreement expressly allows it.

The privacy and legal protections are a major selling point. Information submitted to the Secretary or the outside research organization would be exempt from public disclosure under 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(3)(B). The charter also must include safeguards for handling data and must prevent reverse engineering of aggregate data to identify a participant. At the same time, the bill sharply limits what the data can be used for: only the development, deployment, safety assessment, and regulation of safety technology, plus the development of safety countermeasures.

The bill also makes clear what PARTS does not do. Joining the program would not satisfy any other federal regulatory requirement or any NHTSA reporting mandate. The Secretary would not need to write new regulations to run the program, and the Paperwork Reduction Act would not apply to information gathered under PARTS. Congress would authorize $4,000,000 for fiscal year 2026, rising to $6,000,000 in 2027, $7,000,000 in 2028, $8,000,000 in 2029, and $9,000,000 in 2030 — a total of $34,000,000 over five years.