The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers told United States and European Union negotiating teams that the industry will sponsor a study by leading research institutions to demonstrate equivalence between certain American and European auto regulations. The Alliance, along with the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) and the American Automotive Policy Council (AAPC), have been actively engaged with U.S. and E.U. governments to seek a vital regulatory harmonization component to a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement.
“The U.S. and Europe have the most advanced auto safety regulations in the world, and in many cases, the differences between the standards are very modest,” said Rob Strassburger, Vice President for Safety and Harmonization at the Auto Alliance. “Mutual recognition of certain standards by the U.S. and E.U. governments will result in significant economic benefits while maintaining safety and environmental performance.”
Regulatory differences between the U.S. and E.U. can act as non-tariff barriers to trade, effectively putting a “trade tax” of 25 percent or more on products sold across the Atlantic, according to a recent European impact assessment.
The study will be conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in partnership with SAFER, a transportation research center at Chalmers University, located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Researchers will examine the degree to which vehicles produced to U.S. safety standards can be expected to provide essentially equivalent real-world safety benefits when driven on European roadways as provided by vehicles produced to E.U. standards (and vice-versa for E.U.-certified vehicles when driven on U.S. roadways).
“UMTRI and SAFER have considerable expertise in road safety on both sides of the Atlantic. We are excited that they chose to pursue this project,” said Strassburger.
UMTRI is a national leader in transportation data and analysis with over 40 years of experience with analysis of national crash datasets in the US to understand both injury risk and benefits of a variety of crashworthiness as well as crash avoidance technologies. SAFER is a joint research unit comprised of 25 partner organizations that have participated in a large number of E.U. projects on traffic safety, including in-depth data collection projects such as PENDANT, SafetyNet and DaCoTA and the major Field Operational Tests (FOTs) such as euroFOT and DriveC2X plus the networking project FOTnet.
Harmonization is an economic vitality issue, according to the Auto Alliance. Compliance with diverse national environmental and vehicle safety standards imposes engineering, design, and manufacturing constraints that can raise costs to consumers.
Manufacturing is the most important sector for a strong economy, according to Alliance opinion polling where 92 percent of those polled said manufacturing is “very” or “somewhat” important to a strong, modern economy, with only 4 percent saying it was not important. Within the manufacturing sector, the production of automobiles has a dramatic impact. Auto manufacturing depends on a broad range of parts, components and materials provided by thousands of suppliers, as well as a vast retail and vehicle maintenance network of dealers. In the U.S., 8 million workers and their families depend on autos. Each year the industry generates $500 billion in paychecks, while generating $70 billion in tax revenues across the country.
This Press Release is courtesy of Autoalliance.org
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