Sponsors (3)
The bill promotes safer, more accessible, and standards-backed traffic technologies and provides modest federal grants to help local pedestrian-safety projects, but it risks slowing deployment, raising costs for smaller jurisdictions and vendors, and may not fund enough projects to meet widespread needs.
Millions of road users — drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and transportation workers in urban and rural communities — stand to see safer streets from clearer, technology-enhanced traffic controls and new pedestrian infrastructure that reduce crash risk.
People with disabilities will gain better access to sidewalks, crossings, signals, and new traffic devices because grants and device rules require ADA compliance and accessibility protections.
Standards-backed proposals and evidence requirements reduce the risk of deploying distracting or poorly designed traffic technologies, protecting road users from unsafe systems.
Requiring supporting evidence, federal review, and waiting for the mandated study risks delaying deployment of promising safety technologies and infrastructure, which prolongs current crash risks for pedestrians and other road users.
Smaller vendors, local governments, tribal governments, and small municipalities may face higher costs and administrative burdens to produce required evidence and meet federal/ADA requirements, limiting their ability to participate or slowing projects.
The authorized funding level (~$5 million per year) is modest and may be insufficient to address widespread pedestrian-safety needs, limiting the number and scale of projects that can be funded.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Directs NIST and DOT to develop technology and study/implement physical measures to protect pedestrians and creates a $5M/year grant program for pedestrian-safety infrastructure.
Official title: To require the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Secretary of Transportation to take certain actions to develop physical alternatives to better protect pedestrians and vulnerable road users against traffic incidents, and for other purposes.
Introduced August 5, 2025 by Norma Judith Torres · Last progress August 5, 2025
Requires NIST to identify technology-based improvements to traffic control devices that help inform vehicle operators and protect pedestrians and other vulnerable road users while ensuring those solutions will not distract drivers. Directs the Department of Transportation to study rising pedestrian fatalities in urban areas, evaluate physical and technology-based countermeasures (including intelligent speed assistance and blind spot detection), brief two House committees within two years, and create a grant program to fund pedestrian-safety infrastructure projects for cities, tribes, and municipalities with $5,000,000 authorized per year.