USDOT Removed Road Safety Policies From Public View, Former Official Says

If verified, the removal of federally maintained safety guidance from public access would reduce transparency in a department responsible for overseeing roads that recorded 40,990 traffic...

The Federal Highway Administration removed several road safety policies from public view following Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's assumption of office in early 2025, according to Barbara McCann, a former U.S. Department of Transportation road safety policy official who served across multiple administrations before retiring in January 2025, as reported by The Guardian on October 13, 2026.

McCann, who worked on road safety policy at USDOT for more than a decade, said she began monitoring the department's public-facing policy materials after Duffy, a former Fox News host and ally of President Donald Trump, took leadership of the agency. She told The Guardian she grew increasingly concerned as policies disappeared from public access.

The specific policies that were removed have not been fully enumerated in available public records as of the date of this report. The Federal Highway Administration's website and its public document archive are the primary records that would confirm which guidance documents were withdrawn, when, and under whose authorization. Those details remain unknown based on currently available source material.

Duffy was confirmed as the 20th Secretary of Transportation by the U.S. Senate on January 28, 2025, according to the Senate confirmation record. Prior to his cabinet appointment, he served as a U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District from 2011 to 2019 and later as a television personality.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded 40,990 traffic fatalities on U.S. Roads in 2023, the most recent full year for which final data are publicly available, according to NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System. That figure represents a central data point in ongoing federal debates about highway safety standards and design guidelines.

Road safety experts cited in The Guardian report warned that removing or deprioritizing safety guidance documents could reduce the practical effectiveness of safety programs administered at the state and local level, which rely on federal frameworks. The mechanism by which removed federal guidance affects local road design decisions involves the Federal-Aid Highway Program, through which USDOT distributes funds to states partly contingent on compliance with federal standards. States that lose access to updated federal guidance may apply outdated criteria to road design and traffic management decisions.

The USDOT has not issued a public statement as of October 13, 2026 specifying which documents were removed, explaining the rationale, or identifying whether the removals were temporary or permanent. A Freedom of Information Act request to FHWA for a document removal log would be the procedural mechanism through which a full accounting could be obtained.

Critics of the department's direction, as quoted in The Guardian, framed the policy removals in the context of broader administration efforts to reduce what officials have characterized as regulatory overreach. Duffy and department spokespersons have not responded to specific questions about the safety guidance removals in any public record available at the time of publication.

The USDOT administers roughly $115 billion in annual federal transportation investment, including highway, transit, rail, and aviation programs, according to the department's fiscal year 2025 budget justification submitted to Congress. Highway safety programs represent a subset of that total, with the Highway Safety Improvement Program alone distributing approximately $3.3 billion annually to states under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-58).

What remains unknown is the complete list of documents removed, the dates of removal, whether internal communications directed the removals, and whether any formal regulatory process was followed. A FHWA internal directive log, agency email records obtainable through FOIA, or a congressional oversight request to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee or the Senate Commerce Committee would be the public records most likely to answer those questions.