US Highway Safety Agency Fires 4 Percent of Staff

Drivers on the U.S. 101 freeway in Los Angeles on Aug. 30, 2019. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has terminated about 4 percent, or several dozen, of its 800-strong workforce, the agency said on Monday.

“The last administration grew NHTSA by a whopping 30 percent. Even with these modest efficiencies, NHTSA is still considerably larger today than it was four years ago,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

“We have retained positions critical to the mission of saving lives, preventing injuries, and reducing economic costs due to road traffic crashes. We will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment in accordance with the Vehicle Safety Act and our data-driven, risk-based investigative process.”

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its leader Elon Musk have been working with federal agencies since President Donald Trump took office in January to make the government more efficient, in part by cutting jobs deemed as wasteful.

The U.S. Transportation Department has made other cuts, including terminating about 350 of the approximately 45,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers.

Also on Monday, officials with the Transportation Department, which includes the NHTSA, told employees to respond to an email from the Office of Personnel Management instructing workers to reply by Monday night with a list of their recent accomplishments.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Fox News regarding the email: “If you can’t come up with five things that you did, you know maybe you shouldn’t be employed here, so again, this is an easy task.”

Musk has also said on X that if a worker did not respond, it would be taken as a resignation, and that some employees might be promoted for having good responses.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) criticized the NHTSA cuts in several posts on X, accusing Musk of “slashing & trashing the agencies that hold him & his cars accountable for safety, including his very problematic self driving technology.”

In 2024, NHSTA started investigating Tesla’s self-driving system after one of the company’s vehicles struck a pedestrian, who died. The agency also launched an investigation into Tesla’s actions in response to a probe into Tesla’s Autopilot system, which the NHSTA previously found defective. Tesla has said it was updating the system, which assists drivers with steering, to fix the problems.

When previously asked about Musk, who also owns electric automobile company Tesla, Trump told reporters that he would not allow conflicts of interest. Musk has also said he would recuse himself in the event of a conflict.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.