Mr. Owens leads the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's national safety organization overseeing a budget of $966.2 million and 626 full-time employees across the country. In this capacity, Mr. Owens executes NHTSA’s mission of setting safety standards for motor vehicles and vehicle equipment, facilitating the testing and deployment of advanced vehicle technologies, rooting out vehicle defects, and educating Americans to help them drive, ride, and walk safely.
During his keynote at the 31st annual World Traffic Safety Symposium at the Javits Center, Mr. Owens will address a group of leading safety stakeholders, auto industry personnel and media.
This year’s Symposium will examine traffic safety best practices from here in the US and across the globe for building and buying a safer car, designing safer roads, implementing better laws and programs like Vision Zero and Complete Streets that make roads safer for all highway users. The program will also continue the dialog on autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assist technologies.
Before coming to NHTSA, Mr. Owens was Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation for more than 2 years, and he also served as the Department’s Acting General Counsel in mid-late 2017. In these roles, he helped oversee the activities of the Department’s lawyers covering every mode of transportation. Mr. Owens also coordinated with senior leaders and career experts on the Department’s efforts to enhance safety for the traveling public while identifying and reducing unnecessary burdens, streamlining the infrastructure permitting process, and ensuring that the Department’s regulations accommodate innovation in a safety-conscious and technology-neutral manner.
About the New York International Automobile Show
120 years ago, a group of enthusiasts in Manhattan joined together to showcase automobiles to a growing group of consumers intrigued by the prospect of owning a 'horseless carriage' and so began a journey to what is now the New York International Auto Show and the largest area for new vehicles sales in the nation. Today, the Show is where car-buying decisions are made. In 2019, 72% of attendees said they were in the market to buy or lease a vehicles within the next 12 months, and 36% added a brand to their consideration list as a result of their visit to the Show.
The 2020 New York Auto Show runs from April 10 to 19
Press Days are April 8 & 9
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