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In 1966, Congress boldly reshaped the American approach to road safety and thereby established the United States as the worldwide leader in vehicle safety. Congressional action led to the establishment of the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and the motor-vehicle safety defects and recall system. However, the safety environment that gave rise to these responses has evolved substantially. Fifty years later, the United States is unable to properly regulate rapidly advancing safety technologies, and the recall system is wholly unsuited to ensuring the safety of software-driven systems. Congress must act to update the road safety system in order to enable the United States to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the new transportation era.

In 1998, the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) under the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) facilitated the negotiation of an agreement that permits all regions of the world to develop harmonized global technical regulations regarding automotive safety, environmental protection, and energy efficiency. While hardly a panacea for harmonization, the concept is pure. As demonstrated herein, however, the execution can get messy. This article discusses the harmonization process under the 1998 Agreement, chronicles efforts to transpose GTR 1 into the laws of three major automotive nations, and then, in light of that experience, offers several constructive recommendations on how to improve the process of this essential, increasingly important international trend.