- CR strongly supports consumer safety wins—including fixing deadly electronic door latches, extending automatic emergency braking protections to cyclists and motorcyclists, setting e-bike battery safety standards, addressing misleading automation claims, and studying the safety risks of in-vehicle touchscreens and toxic chemicals
- Provisions advance as part of the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026, which is set to be included in Congress’s once-in-five-years surface transportation reauthorization
WASHINGTON, DC—The House Energy and Commerce Committee today passed the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026—the motor vehicle safety and consumer protection title of Congress’s once-in-five-years surface transportation reauthorization. Consumer Reports (CR) applauds the committee’s overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of key consumer safety provisions that will make roads and vehicles safer for people across the country.
William Wallace, Director of Safety Advocacy at Consumer Reports, said, “This bill is packed with meaningful steps to make our roads safer. At a time when more than 100 people a day die on U.S. roads, we are grateful to the House members who brought creative ideas to the table, sought out expert perspectives, and worked across party lines to strike a deal that will help address the terrible toll of crashes on our roads. We call on the full House and the Senate to move these provisions forward expeditiously, and to pass them separately if broader funding disagreements keep the surface transportation bill from advancing.”
Today’s Safety Wins
- The SAFE Exit Act: The Motor Vehicle Modernization Act includes requirements for readily accessible mechanical interior door releases in all new vehicles equipped with electronic door latches. Investigations have linked electronic door latch failures to at least 15 deaths—including people trapped in burning vehicles as first responders struggled to reach them. More than 48,000 consumers have signed CR’s petition calling for this fix.
- The Magnus White Safe Streets for Everyone Act: The bill requires NHTSA to ensure that automatic emergency braking systems installed on new vehicles can detect and appropriately respond to bicyclists and motorcyclists—closing a critical gap in current federal safety rules. AEB is one of the most significant auto safety advances of the past two decades, and CR has long called for its protections to extend to everyone who uses our roads. Starting this July, new vehicles in the European Union must already meet a standard requiring AEB systems to detect and appropriately respond to both pedestrians and cyclists.
- The Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-Ion Batteries Act: The bill requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to issue a mandatory safety standard adopting the requirements of UL 2271, UL 2272, and UL 2849, which together set a baseline for the safety of batteries and electrical systems in e-bikes, e-scooters, hoverboards and other small electric personal transportation devices. In New York City alone, lithium-ion batteries have caused more than 1,000 fires since 2019, resulting in 523 injuries and 39 deaths. CR published an investigation into this issue in 2022 and has since joined a coalition of more than 21 organizations calling on Congress to act.
- The Know Before You Drive Act: The bill directs the Federal Trade Commission to take enforcement action against deceptive marketing of driving automation technology—addressing names and portrayals that can lead drivers to dangerously overestimate what their vehicles can do. A 2022 survey by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that 42% of Tesla Autopilot users and 53% of GM Super Cruise users said they were comfortable treating their vehicles as fully self-driving, when in reality these two systems are driver-assist systems requiring diligent, active human supervision.
- The Driver Technology and Pedestrian Safety Act: The bill directs NHTSA to study the impact of in-vehicle touchscreens and the handheld use of smartphones on traffic fatalities and severe injuries. As digital interfaces have increasingly replaced physical controls, and as nearly everyone now carries a smartphone, clearer guidelines are needed to ensure vehicle systems minimize cognitive and visual demand, and completion of this study would be a step toward addressing a growing and underregulated risk to road safety.
- The Motor Vehicle Flammability Standards Study Act: The bill includes the bipartisan Motor Vehicle Flammability Standards Study Act requiring NHTSA to study whether its 1971 flammability standard for the vehicle interior still effectively prevents fires, and to understand what health risks the chemicals used to meet that standard may pose. Currently, to meet this decades-old standard, manufacturers add flame retardant chemicals—including known and suspected carcinogens—to seat foam and other vehicle interior materials. A peer-reviewed study found harmful flame retardants in the air inside virtually all vehicles tested. More than 44,000 consumers have signed a CR petition calling for an updated standard that would not expose people to these harms.
What’s Next
The Motor Vehicle Modernization Act provisions passed today are expected to be consolidated with a broader five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill and move toward a House floor vote.
CR also submitted a letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee today raising serious concerns about aspects of the BUILD America 250 Act pertaining to highway funding—including a proposed annual fee on electric vehicle owners that significantly exceeds what gasoline vehicle drivers pay, and the elimination of $7.5 billion in EV charging infrastructure funding that consumers, particularly those in rural communities, depend on. CR urged the committee to reconsider these provisions, as well as the bill’s overall unsustainable and unbalanced approach toward road funding, before the legislation advances.
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Media Contact: Emily Akpan, emily.akpan@consumer.org