The National Highway Safety Administration was created 50 years ago in an effort to curb the number of Americans dying or getting injured in car crashes. Its role was to create safety standards for motor vehicles, supervise recalls in case of defects, educate people and conduct research on traffic safety as well as allocate safety grants to states.
Back in the days, when the agency was created, more than 50,000 people were killed very year in car accidents in the US. It went down to 32,479 in 2011 and then gradually went back up to 36,120 last year.