Meng Transportation Measures Become Law

President Obama signed a key transportation bill into law Friday night that includes three pieces of legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens). The measures aim to enhance the safety of school buses, improve the performance of child car seats, and protect the privacy of motorists in driverless vehicles.

"Enacting my three pieces of legislation into law is a huge boost towards saving children's lives, increasing their safety, and ensuring that privacy protections are addressed for future driving technologies," said Meng. "I look forward to each measure benefiting New York and the nation for many years to come."

The federal transportation bill, entitled Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST), is a five-year $305 billion spending bill that funds the nation's roads, bridges, highways, and transit systems.

Under Meng's provision to improve school bus safety, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will be required to review existing federal and state rules that regulate such items as bus maintenance, driver training, inspection standards, public access to inspection results, and accident data. After the review, experts will be required to issue recommendations on best practices that seek to improve the safety and reliability of school bus transportation.

The Congresswoman's measure to enhance the performance of car seats will require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to improve data collection on the types of child restraint systems in use when a child is involved in an automobile collision. After three years of collecting data, the Secretary of Transportation will be required to provide a report to Congress on the performance of different types of child restraint systems. Data improvements will include information on the type of child restraint system in use – a five-point harness or booster seat – and whether the restraint was forward or rear facing when the crash occurred.

Lastly, the driverless car legislation will add consumer privacy protections to the list of items GAO must assess when evaluating the readiness of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to handle autonomous vehicle technologies such as driverless cars. Once assessed, a report will be issued to Congress to ensure that privacy safeguards have been addressed when this technology is rolled out in the future. Meng's measure, the Autonomous Vehicle Privacy Protection Act of 2015 (H.R. 3876), is the first ever federal piece of legislation to be introduced that deals only with driverless cars.

Meng is a founder and Co-Chair of the Kids Safety Caucus, the first bipartisan coalition in the House that promotes child-safety issues.

The bipartisan Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act was overwhelmingly passed by the House and Senate on Thursday. It is the largest transportation bill in a decade.