The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced that it will drop its emphasis on making vehicles safer in crashes in favor of a new focus on "crash prevention." "I'd like to begin to focus on the event before the crash," NHTSA administrator Jeffrey Runge href="http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/speeches/040511Runge/SAE-Present.pdf">told the Society of Automotive Engineers in Washington last May. "We may have plateaued out in terms of crashworthiness." Whereas NHTSA regulatory initiatives for the last 34 years have sought to boost

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has reopened for comment a rule requiring employers to pay for personal protective equipment, "such as fall arrest systems, safety shoes, and protective gloves," that workers must currently purchase themselves, or do without (69 Fed. Reg. 41,851 (2004)). Although the rule, first proposed during the Clinton administration in March 1999 (64 Fed. Reg. 15,401), was open for public comments until June 1999, OSHA has let it languish on its long-term agenda for most of the past four years and has yet to announce any anticipated date

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a countrywide series of public forums for August on an eRulemaking Initiative. The four forums will be held in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. In addition to EPA's public meetings, Harvard University is partnering with the eRulemaking Initiative to host an online dialogue during August. Details about the online dialogue will be released soon.

A new Harris poll conducted for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety reveals that nine out of ten Americans believe that governmental regulation to protect health and safety is important. The finding accords with similar findings since 1996. According to the study's authors, "the weight of public opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of having federal responsibility for . . . safety and public health. The intensity of support is also high." Of those who rated the government's role as important, almost 64% (or 58% of all respondents) considered the government's role as very important.