WASHINGTON — NHTSA chief Steven Cliff is leaving the nation’s top auto safety regulator and will join the California Air Resources Board as its executive officer on Sept. 12, the state regulatory agency said Friday.
Cliff was confirmed by the Senate on May 26 — only 78 days ago — as NHTSA’s 16th administrator. The agency had been without a permanent leader since 2017, when Mark Rosekind resigned as the Trump administration took over.
He previously was the agency’s deputy administrator — a role he had filled since shortly after President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021, a year that saw 1,093 issued recalls, “the most in NHTSA’s history,” Cliff told Automotive News last month.
Before joining NHTSA, Cliff was deputy executive officer for the California Air Resources Board, where he oversaw a program regulating vehicle emissions.
Under Cliff, the agency released first-of-its-kind data on crashes linked to advanced driver-assistance systems and fully automated driving systems.
NHTSA also has escalated its scrutiny of Tesla’s Autopilot, as evidenced by a recently upgraded investigation into the electric vehicle maker’s advanced driver-assistance system after a series of crashes in the U.S. that resulted in more than a dozen injuries and one death.
