NHTSA Issues Motor Vehicle Whistleblower Program Proposed Regulations
The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) has published proposed regulations to implement the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act, which Congress passed in 2015 as part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. The Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act created a whistleblower program designed to incentivize motor vehicle industry insiders to report safety-related defects and violations. Under the program, qualifying whistleblowers can receive a monetary award if information they provide leads to sanctions exceeding $1 million.
Congress required NHTSA to promulgate whistleblower regulations to guide whistleblowers on how its whistleblower program will work. NHTSA has now released its proposal for those regulations. According to the NHTSA, “the proposal defines certain terms critical to the operation of the whistleblower program, outlines the procedures for submitting original information to NHTSA and applying for awards, discusses the Agency’s procedures for making decisions on award applications, and generally explains the scope of the whistleblower program to the public and potential whistleblowers.”
As part of its process to come up with these proposed regulations, NHTSA considered other Federal whistleblower programs, including the SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs. However, there remain certain differences between the rules for those programs and the rules proposed by NHTSA. For example, a “whistleblower” under the NHTSA’s proposed rules must be an employee or contractor of a motor vehicle manufacturer, part supplier, or dealership, whereas the definition of a whistleblower under the SEC and CFTC programs includes “any individual.”
In addition, NHTSA’s proposed rule makes clear that a whistleblower must provide “original information relating to any motor vehicle defect, noncompliance, or violation or alleged violation of any notification or reporting requirement . . . which is likely to cause unreasonable risk of death or serious physical injury.” The proposed rule also states that whistleblowers eligible for an award will receive between 10-30% of the monetary sanctions collected in the covered action, as determined by the NHTSA Administrator.
Finally, NHTSA has made clear that while its rulemaking is in progress, the whistleblower protection and award provisions are statutory and therefore not contingent on a rule being in place. Accordingly, NHTSA has an active, ongoing whistleblower program, and NHTSA encourages whistleblowers with information to come forward during the pendency of the rulemaking.
Read the proposed regulations here.
Read more about G&G’s whistleblower practice here.