The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was enacted in the United States in 1966 to empower the federal government to set and administer new safety standards for motor vehicles and road traffic safety. The Act was the first mandatory federal safety standards for motor vehicles. The Act created the National Highway Safety Bureau (now National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). The Act was one of a number of initiatives by the government in response to increasing number of cars and associated fatalities and injuries on the road following a period when the number of people killed on the road had increased 6-fold and the number of vehicles was up 11-fold since 1925. The reduction of the rate of death attributable to motor-vehicle crashes in the United States represents the successful public health response to a great technologic advance of the 20th century—the motorization of America. History Systematic motor-vehicle safety efforts began during the 1960s. In 1960, unintentional injuries caused 93,803 deaths; 41% were associated with motor-vehicle crashes. In 1966, after Congress and the general public had become thoroughly horrified by five years of skyrocketing motor-vehicle-related fatality rates, the enactment of the Highway Safety Act created the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB), which later became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The systematic approach to motor-vehicle-related injury prevention began with NHSB's first director, William Haddon. Haddon, a public health physician, recognized that standard public health methods and epidemiology could be applied to preventing motor-vehicle-related and other injuries. He defined interactions between host (human), agent (motor vehicle), and environmental (highway) factors before, during, and after crashes resulting in injuries. Tackling problems identified with each factor during each phase of the crash, NHSB initiated a campaign to prevent motor-vehicle-related injuries. When he signed the bill into law on September 9, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson noted that while 29 American soldiers had died over the recent Labor Day weekend, 614 Americans died in automobile accidents. In 1966, passage of the Highway Safety Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act authorized the federal government to set and regulate standards for motor vehicles and highways, a mechanism necessary for effective prevention The Highway Safety Act resulted in the national adoption of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, while the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act led to the national adoption of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Many