Federal highway safety expands to protect disabled-vehicle and work-zone crashes

What it does

This bill expands federal highway safety programs to explicitly protect people near disabled vehicles and in work zones. It requires the Department of Transportation to convene working groups with industry, safety experts, and first responders to collect crash data, identify solutions, and improve awareness campaigns for roadside and work zone accidents. It also mandates annual congressional reports on how states use work zone safety funding.

Why we flagged it

The bill's operative mechanism is to expand the scope of existing federal highway safety programs to explicitly include disabled-vehicle and work-zone crashes, and to mandate data collection and working-group coordination. It is a straightforward public-safety measure with no private carve-outs or deregulatory intent.

What the text implies

• Working groups may recommend new federal safety standards or funding mechanisms that could impose compliance costs on states, contractors, and vehicle manufacturers, though the bill itself does not mandate adoption of recommendations.
• Expanded data collection and 'Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria' adoption may reveal systemic safety gaps in current state and local practices, potentially triggering pressure for regulatory or funding changes.
• Annual congressional reporting on work zone safety contingency funds creates a new accountability mechanism that may expose underutilization or misallocation of existing safety resources.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

The bill expands federal safety protections and data collection for two high-risk populations: people near disabled vehicles on roadsides and workers/motorists in work zones. By mandating working groups, data standardization, and congressional oversight of safety spending, it increases transparency and accountability in how federal highway safety dollars are deployed, potentially reducing preventable deaths and injuries.

Who stands to gain

• traffic safety technology and data-collection vendors
• occupational safety and health consulting firms
• automobile and vehicle safety manufacturers (through working-group participation and potential safet

Named in the bill

Department of Transportation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Highway Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Title 23, United States Code, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117–58), State transportation departments, Construction labor unions, First responders and traffic incident responders

Where it stands

10 cosponsors: 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans.

• Apr 24, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
• Apr 24, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

6 lobbying clients named this bill on 8 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $1,563,761 in lobbying spend. A filing names 26 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 82% of bills with at least one filing.

Troy Carter, the sponsor, reported $1,021,748 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.

• American Society of Civil Engineers — $489,417 on 2 filings
• American College of Emergency Physicians — $468,727 on 1 filing
• National Asphalt Pavement Association — $249,240 on 2 filings
• Associated General Contractors of America — $216,377 on 1 filing
• National Stone Sand and Gravel Association — $110,000 on 1 filing

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 23, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.