By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Joe Biden will nominate Joe Biden to be the top regulator of auto safety. According to testimony from Congress seen by Reuters, Biden would promise to tackle the huge increase in road deaths in the United States.

Steven Cliff will speak to a Senate panel on Thursday about the unprecedented increase in fatalities caused by accidents on the roads. “I am determined to turn this around.”

He said that the U.S. should learn how to transform a culture which accepts loss of many thousands in road crashes as normal.

U.S. traffic deaths soared by 18.4% https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-traffic-deaths-soar-184-first-half-2021-20160-2021-10-28 in the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period a year earlier, representing the most deadly first half of a year on American roads since 2006, NHTSA said. The six-months witnessed the greatest increase in traffic deaths since 1975 when the current tracing system was introduced.

Cliff is a former official of the California Air Resources Board who has been serving as NHTSA’s deputy administrator since February.

Cliff said a new infrastructure bill increases NHTSA’s budget by 50% and “will improve our understanding of where and how crashes happen by improving data quality and expanding electronic reporting to move from paper-based data collection systems to digital systems.”

Cliff is a major figure in Biden Administration’s proposed rewrite to vehicle fuel economy standards up through 2026. Cliff also oversees the safety investigation for electric car maker Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:) Inc.

Part of the U.S. Transportation Department this agency faces an backlog of auto safety regulations pending and has not had any Senate-confirmed administrators since January 2017 when Republican former President Donald Trump was elected.

In August, NHTSA proposed to reverse the Trump administration’s repeal of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. NHTSA and Environmental Protection Agency have proposed to reverse Trump’s rollback of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. This is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to officials, the Biden administration might announce its final fuel economy rules and regulations on greenhouse gases emissions for vehicles as soon as next-year.

“I am committed to making the transportation fleet as efficient as possible, to save consumers billions of dollars at the pump, to improve the nation’s energy security and to protect the environment,” Cliff’s testimony says.