Announcements

The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) awards contracts and grants to states, universities, commercial entities, and non–profit organizations for conducting behavioral and vehicle safety research.

On August 22, 2008, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced its audit of NHTSA's management of its research program.  The announced objectives were to determine whether NHTSA: (1) allocated research funds and selected projects based on their likelihood to reduce the number and severity of crashes or other targeting strategy; (2) systematically evaluated and disseminated project results to improve safety; and (3) used a risk-based internal control framework for its oversight of research contractors and grantees as a means to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.

We terminated this audit because of limitations to our audit scope and congressional requests for higher priority audits.  We briefed NHTSA senior staff on our observations and best practices to date.