President Barack Obama spent his first year in office arguing that China was crucial to U.S. efforts to deal with nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea and major economic and environmental initiatives.

The new approach is being spurred, in part, by U.S. lawmakers’ complaints that Obama’s efforts to win Chinese cooperation have failed. Those lawmakers are facing November elections and are increasingly attacking China as a way to win votes from Americans worried about jobs.

In the annual State Department human rights report, released Thursday, China was slammed for a poor and, in some cases, worsening rights record. Michael Posner, an assistant secretary of state, said China was harassing lawyers and activists seen by Beijing as threats to the Chinese Communist Party, repressing Tibetan and Uighur minorities and tightly controlling and monitoring the Internet.

Obama himself led the charge on currency. He used a speech to the Export-Import Bank conference to push for China to change its currency policy, saying Chinese movement “to a more market-oriented exchange rate” is needed to help efforts to rebalance the global economy.

The Obama administration wants China to allow its currency, the yuan, to rise in value against the dollar. American manufacturers say China unfairly manipulates its currency by holding down the yuan’s value to gain trade advantages over the United States.

Wang Baodong, spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China’s economic and currency policies are “responsible and beneficial to the common interests of our two countries, particularly against the background of jointly facing up to the financial crisis.”

Beijing has held the yuan steady against the dollar for 18 months to help Chinese exporters but is under pressure from Washington and other trading partners who say it is swelling China’s trade surplus.

Obama also said in his speech that countries with external surpluses “need to boost consumption and domestic demand.”

China reported Wednesday that its exports rose in February by 45.7 percent from a year earlier.

Washington and Beijing also are embroiled in disputes over access to each other’s markets for tires, steel and other goods.

In January, China threatened to punish American companies in retaliation for the U.S. announcement of a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island Beijing claims as its own. Obama also infuriated China by meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader China accuses of seeking independence for Tibet from China.

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In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations. Congressional leaders are hoping they can find enough support from other wavering Democrats to pass legislation that only cleared the House by five votes in an earlier incarnation.

The concession came as House Democrats attended a lengthy meeting with White House health adviser Nancy Ann DeParle, who tried to answer questions, resolve differences and calm nerves, especially for lawmakers expecting tough challenges in November. Participants said they generally embraced White House-brokered compromises on prescription drug benefits for the elderly and new taxes on generous insurance plans.

At stake is the president’s call to expand health care to some 30 million people who lack insurance and to prohibit insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people who have been sick. Almost every American would be affected by the legislation, which would change the ways many people receive and pay for health care, from the most routine checkup to the most expensive, lifesaving treatment. And most Americans would be required by law to get health insurance.

Republicans continued their fierce criticisms of the president’s efforts, vowing to make Democrats pay dearly in the fall elections if they don’t back off from what they brand a government takeover of health care. But senior Democrats predicted they can convince their colleagues that doing nothing is the worst option of all, politically and substantively.

“The stars are aligning for victory on comprehensive health reform,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “The end is in sight.”

The end might be in sight, but the outcome remains uncertain. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., must round up at least 216 votes when the real nose-counting and arm-twisting begin in a few days, after final cost estimates arrive from the Congressional Budget Office. All House and Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose the legislation.

With Senate Democrats no longer able to block Republican filibusters, the strategy calls for House Democrats to embrace a health bill the Senate passed in December, despite their numerous objections. Democratic senators in turn would promise to make a limited number of changes under “budget reconciliation” rules, which bar filibusters.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers quarreled Thursday over whether Obama must sign the Senate bill into law before Congress can make the changes, which Democrats see as crucial to making the overall package more politically palatable. Republicans plan to pounce on Democrats the instant the Senate bill becomes law, and House and Senate parliamentarians eventually may have to determine the allowable sequence of legislative actions.

Congressional Democrats appeared to agree with the White House on Thursday on a handful of issues. One would close a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the so-called doughnut hole that has caused financial and emotional stress for numerous elderly Americans.

Another would impose a new excise tax, starting in 2018, on employer-provided health plans worth more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. The Senate had wanted a stiffer tax on such “Cadillac plans,” but the more labor-friendly House resisted.

Obama tried to soothe the feelings of two generally liberal constituencies—Congress’s black and Hispanic caucuses—in separate White House meetings Thursday. Some black lawmakers say the health legislation doesn’t do enough to help poor people. Many Hispanic members say it mistreats illegal immigrants trying to buy insurance with their own money.

One of the toughest hurdles facing Pelosi involves abortion. Some anti-abortion Democrats say the Senate language is not sufficiently airtight to prevent taxpayer dollars from mingling with money that might be used to subsidize abortions.

Others disagree, and party leaders acknowledged Thursday they can’t resolve the dispute using budget reconciliation rules. Instead they hope that only a few House Democrats who voted for the health care package in November will now switch to “no” because of the abortion issue. Party leaders think they can offset those defections by persuading some of the 39 House Democrats who voted “no” last year to switch to “yes.”

Many House Democrats who oppose legalized abortion “are either satisfied enough with the Senate provision, or they decide that that’s as much as they’re going to get and they don’t want to defeat health care,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer concurred with Waxman’s comments.

Even if Pelosi and her allies can eke out a House victory, Senate Republicans are vowing to use almost every delaying tactic they can to slow final passage of the entire Democratic package, even if they’re unable to kill it.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., promised a sentence-by-sentence examination of the proposals, and scores of challenges. There will be “a lot of very tough votes on this bill,” he said.

The White House seemed to back away from its earlier insistence that Congress act by March 18. “If it takes a couple extra days after a year” of struggles, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday, then “it takes a couple extra days.”

Gibbs also said Obama was pushing the Senate to remove some of the special deals that remain in the legislation.

One, championed by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., would provide Medicare benefits to residents of tiny Libby, Mont., who suffer from asbestos-related illnesses from a now-closed mining operation. The other, sought by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., could spend $100 million to build a hospital at the University of Connecticut.

“We’ve made it clear to the Senate that the president’s position in the final legislation should not contain provisions that favor a single state or a single district differently than others,” Gibbs said.

The request drew a chilly response from senators. Jim Manley, spokesman for Reid, said the leader’s office “appreciates the White House views, but no decisions have been made.”

Democratic leaders must resolve several more issues before presenting a final package to their colleagues and the public. Lawmakers have not decided whether to attach an overhaul of the college student loan program to the health legislation. Nor have they settled on details for a higher Medicare tax on wealthy Americans, treatment of a dozen states that give their residents relatively generous Medicaid benefits and subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance.

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Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Alan Fram, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Laurie Kellman and Ann Sanner contributed to this report.

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Dodd said Thursday he would release his proposal on Monday and begin the committee’s work on the bill the week of March 22.

“Clearly, we need to move along,” he said.

His decision immediately complicated the prospects for a Senate bill already months in the making, and it raised new questions about Congress’ ability to respond to a financial crisis that erupted more than 18 months ago with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Four weeks of negotiations between Dodd, D-Conn., and Republican Sen. Bob Corker had closed differences over key provisions, including consumer protections, but details on that and other sticking points remained unsettled.

“As time moves on, you just limit the possibilities of getting something done, particularly a bill of this magnitude and this complexity,” Dodd said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday he hoped the Senate would act on a bill by Memorial Day.

Dodd’s surprise decision to move without a final deal comes during an era of high partisanship in Congress that has entangled health care, blocked progress on climate change and energy legislation, and angered a public with an increasing disdain for incumbents.

Congress and the administration have been trying to assemble an overhaul of regulations since last summer in hopes of preventing a recurrence of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. It has not been an easy task. The House passed its version of a bill in December on a party-line vote.

“It will continue to be a challenge to reach a bipartisan deal,” said Scott Talbott, the chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an association of the banking industry.

Corker on Thursday said he and Dodd had made significant progress and had agreed in principle on consumer protections, one of the most contentious issues. He described himself as disappointed in Dodd’s decision but said he expected Dodd’s proposal would be more moderate than a bill Dodd drafted late last year.

“There has been no breakdown. Like, none,” he said. “What happened was you’re on the five-yard line, the lights went out.”

Still, Corker blamed Dodd’s rush to propose a new bill on the current dispute over health care and pressure on Dodd to offer a bill before the Senate puts the health care bill through a bitterly partisan fast-track process. “I understand the pressure that he is under,” Corker said.

Dodd, who is retiring when his term ends in January, said the attention to health care was one of several factors driving the clock on financial regulations. He pointed out that this is an election year, and that there few opportunities ahead to get a bill through committee, pass it in the Senate and then reconcile the differences with the House version.

But Corker said that with a spring recess beginning on March 28, it would be a “travesty” if Dodd were to insist on getting the bill through the committee in one week.

Despite lingering differences, some key aspects of the legislation have bipartisan support. Those include a mechanism for take over and dismantling large, failing firms and forcing the financial industry to cover the costs, and to create a “systemic risk” council that includes the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to look out for firms and practices that could pose a risk to the entire financial system.

Dodd needs Republican support to get the 60-vote margin he needs to overcome delaying tactics. Earlier this year, Dodd tried to negotiate with the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. When those talks stalled, Dodd turned to Corker, a junior senator from Tennessee.

In a statement Thursday, Shelby signaled that Dodd would now have to deal with all the committee Republicans as bloc. “As long as we remain focused on policy and not politics, an agreement is still very possible. The Republican members of the committee stand united and ready to work with Chairman Dodd toward that goal,” he said.

Even if Corker and Dodd had settled their differences over a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, it could still emerge as a stumbling block. The president has made such an independent agency a central provision in the bill. The House version provides for such a stand alone agency, which would regulate institutions that offer credit, mortgages or other consumer financial products.

Republicans, bankers and many in the business sector oppose a separate agency, saying it would add another layer of regulation and bypass existing bank regulators.

Corker and Dodd had agreed to place such an agency inside the Federal Reserve. Corker said the latest agreement would have permitted bank regulators, under certain conditions, to appeal to a government risk council that would have the power to reject new consumer rules. The agency, however, would not have had enforcement powers.

Several Democrats on the Banking Committee have insisted on a freestanding agency, and others have demanded that the agency have autonomous powers to write regulations. But Dodd was unlikely to retreat too far from the common ground he had found with Corker.

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What remains unclear is whether Congress will send him a bill this year.

Obama also met separately later in the day with Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who gave the president an outline of a bill they are drafting. Obama said afterward in a statement that he “looked forward to reviewing their promising framework.”

Obama said he told the senators and the advocacy groups that “my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort.”

The immigration issue is an important one for Obama, who has promised to work to solve the problem. Hispanics voted heavily for Obama in the 2008 presidential election, making the difference in key states like Florida, and their votes will be critical in the November midterm elections when Obama and his fellow Democrats will be fighting to maintain control of the House and Senate.

Latino voters who don’t think progress is being made on the issue may not go to the polls.

After meeting for more than an hour with Obama, immigration advocates told reporters they want Schumer and Graham to at least release their blueprint before a planned March 21 demonstration at the Capitol, with a bill introduced in the Senate soon after.

The relatively short timetable for getting major legislation out of Congress in a midterm election year is one obstacle to getting a bill that combines tougher border enforcement with a pathway to legalization for the estimated 12 million people in the U.S. illegally.

“We had a very good discussion about the difficulties,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union. “I think the president is well aware of it. So are we.”

Medina said the groups also want to discuss the issue with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Clarissa Martinez de Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns for the National Council of La Raza, said Obama told the groups he would make a statement with Schumer and Graham when they release the blueprint.

“It is undeniable that presidential leadership, greater presidential leadership is needed, and the president committed to doing that,” she said.

Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the president agreed to help get a legislative framework out before the rally. She the groups also discussed enforcement.

“We want results,” Salas said. “That’s what we’re going to be expecting in the next couple of weeks.”

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Associated Press writer Suzanne Gamboa contributed to this report.

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Reid’s wife, Landra, 69, broke her back and neck in the accident, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said.

She and the couple’s adult daughter, Lana, were being treated at Inova Fairfax Hospital in suburban Virginia. Neither woman’s injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Manley said.

“While driving on a Washington, D.C., highway, their vehicle was rear-ended by a semi-truck,” Manley said in a statement.

“Mrs. Reid has a broken nose, broken back and broken neck. Lana has a neck injury and facial lacerations. Both Mrs. Reid and Lana are conscious, can feel their extremities, and according to doctors their injuries are non-life threatening,” Manley said. “Sen. Reid has been to the hospital and appreciates the support he and his family are receiving from Nevadans and his colleagues in the Senate.”

Reid later returned to Capitol Hill, where he was meeting with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on efforts to pass health care legislation. He planned to return to the hospital after the meeting, Manley said.

Reid, 70, met Landra while they both were attending Basic High School in Henderson, Nev. They were married in 1959. Lana was born two years later. The Reids also have four sons: Rory, Leif, Josh and Key.

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David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said Thursday his agency will take a “hard look” at the power it has to set safety standards for automakers. Current authority, acquired in the 1960s and 1970s, may not be enough to oversee the technology used in modern vehicles, he said.

But one lawmaker at a House hearing said the agency’s problems seem to have more to do with “ineptitude” and lack of money than with insufficient powers. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said the agency’s response to the Toyota recalls had been sluggish after “years of stagnation in funding.”

Strickland told the panel it was unclear whether the agency can regulate “in a way that allows the auto industry to build and sell safe products that the consumer wants to drive.”

The government may also require automakers to include brake override systems, a fix intended to prevent the type of runaway car incidents that some Toyota drivers have described, Strickland said. It would ensure that a driver stepping on the brakes can slow the vehicle even if the gas pedal is stuck or malfunctioning.

Strickland said the agency will consider mandating event data recorders, or vehicle “black boxes,” which typically record data about whether the brake or accelerator pedals were depressed at the time of a crash. About 60 percent of vehicles already have the technology. He also vowed to look closely at push-button start and stop technologies to ensure that drivers can easily turn their cars off during an emergency.

Thursday’s hearing of a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was the fourth in Congress related to Toyota’s massive recalls for problems with faulty gas pedals and brake problems. The committee was focused on the transportation safety agency’s oversight of the auto industry, which has been criticized for being too lax on automakers.

Under questioning from lawmakers, Strickland defended his agency’s handling of the Toyota recalls and took exception to criticism that it is a “lapdog” of the industry, noting it opened eight investigations into reports of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyotas.

“I don’t see Toyota as an indicative example of failure,” Strickland said. “I see it as NHTSA doing its job.”

Along with reviewing its authority, Strickland said, his agency is seeking 66 new employees to bolster its safety work. The agency will also review its ethics standards following claims that many former staffers head directly to automakers after they leave their jobs.

Congress is considering legislation following Toyota’s recalls. Strickland’s agency has tied 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems, and received new complaints from owners who had their cars fixed and said their vehicles suddenly accelerated afterward.

The Transportation Department has defended its work in policing the auto industry, noting that it dispatched safety officials to Japan late last year to urge the company to take safety concerns seriously. Toyota President Akio Toyoda recently met Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and told him the company would “advance safety to the next level.”

Strickland said his agency receives more than 30,000 complaints a year and received 10,000 complaints in February alone. It has a staff of 57 people to investigate potential defects. He said the program has worked well in finding “unreasonable risks.”

But a former administrator of the agency, Joan Claybrook, testified that it is understaffed, underfunded and lacks the power to hold automakers accountable. Claybrook, who headed the agency during the Carter administration, proposed raising fines on auto companies for withholding information involving recalls. She also faulted the agency over secrecy involving data about potential defects.

The agency has been investigating potential electronic problems in Toyota cars and trucks. Toyota has said it has found no evidence of problems with its vehicles’ electronic throttle controls but is also studying the issue.

Automakers point to declines in highway fatalities and the use of safety technology such as anti-rollover electronic stability control as signs of safety improvements on the road. “By every single measure, these vehicles are dramatically safer,” said former Rep. David McCurdy, D-Okla., president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Crisis or not, Congress is considering the biggest auto safety changes since the TREAD Act, which was approved in 2000 to help the government spot safety defects more quickly following a massive Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. tire recall.

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On the Net:

House Energy and Commerce commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee: http://tinyurl.com/ye6felc

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Even in failure, Republicans planted questions about when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned about allegations from Massa’s employees that he sexually harassed male staff members. The freshman New York Democrat resigned Monday amid a slew of conflicting statements in which he confirmed and denied that he groped staff members and argued that none of the contact was sexual.

By trying to make Democratic leaders rather than Massa the investigative subjects, Republicans attempted to turn the tables on the party that used ethical misconduct to win control of the House in 2006.

Republicans were hurt in that campaign by revelations that GOP leaders took no action after learning that then-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., sent sexually suggestive messages to former male pages.

In a resolution demanding an investigation with a June 30 deadline, House Republican leader John Boehner pointed to a meeting last October between Massa’s top aide and a Pelosi staff member.

Pelosi said in a March 4 news conference, after news stories appeared about Massa’s conduct, that she only learned of the harassment allegations the previous day.

“I asked my staff, I said, ‘Have there been any rumors about any of this before?’ There had been a rumor, but just that, no formal notification to our office,” she said.

Pelosi said her staff did not report the rumor to her, “because, you know what? This is rumor city. Every single day there are rumors. I have a job to do and not to be the receiver of rumors.”

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office said a Massa aide went to the leader’s staff in February with the allegations. Hoyer told one of his own aides to inform the Massa staffer that either Massa—or someone on Massa’s staff—needed to go to ethics committee promptly. Hoyer said he would report it if Massa or his staff did not. The Massa staffer reported the allegations.

The Republican maneuver to force an investigation was part of an all-out GOP effort to highlight Democratic ethical and legal problems in advance of the fall campaign.

Rep. Charles Rangel, a 20-term Democrat, had to step aside as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after the ethics committee found he violated gift rules by accepting corporate money to attend two Caribbean conferences.

Rangel remains under investigation, prolonging the political agony for Democrats. The committee is investigating whether he used his official position to raise money for a college center named after him, and is looking into his belated reporting of hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets.

The resolution introduced by Boehner would have given the ethics committee no choice about investigating what Democratic leaders knew about Massa. Instead, the House voted 402-1 to allow the ethics committee to decide its next step.

The committee has five members from each party, but a tie vote would kill any proposal to investigate Democratic leaders.

The committee ended its investigation of Massa on Wednesday because his resignation took his case out the committee’s jurisdiction.

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In a speech to the Export-Import Bank conference, Obama outlined steps to flesh out his trade initiative. Among them: creating a mini-Cabinet of officials to focus on exports, seeking more financing to support trade efforts, beefing up enforcement of existing trade deals and pushing for the completion of stalled ones.

“We shouldn’t assume that our leadership is guaranteed,” Obama said. “When other markets are growing, and other nations are competing, we’ve got to get even better. We need to secure our companies a level playing field. We need to guarantee American workers a fair shake. In other words, we need to up our game.”

Obama’s trade pitch ties directly to the top concerns of Americans—the bleeding of jobs from the U.S. He promised in his State of the Union address that doubling trade over the next five years will support 2 million American jobs, a pledge he repeated Thursday. But that’s a complicated matter.

Experts say potential jobs from more exports can be negated by job losses resulting from increased reliance on products from abroad. What’s more, it is Obama’s own Democratic Party, backed by its union supporters, that has led opposition to stalled trade-expansion pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

When Obama says that doubling exports will “support” 2 million jobs, he means it will create 2 million additional jobs, the White House said. That is based on an assessment of how many jobs are supported by foreign demand for the goods and services that the United States exports.

Obama sought to reframe the debate about trade. He said the average American doesn’t see it as a means toward jobs or cheaper goods, but rather as a source of blame for shuttered plants and deteriorating communities.

“You can’t blame them for feeling that way,” he said. “Other countries haven’t always played by the same set of rules. America hasn’t always enforced our trade rights, or made sure that the benefits of trade are broadly shared. And we haven’t always done enough to help our workers adapt to a changing world.”

Still, he added: “We’ve got to compete in the global marketplace. Because it’s never been as important an opportunity for America.”

Under Obama’s multitiered trade plan, a new mini-Cabinet of leaders from relevant Cabinet agencies, such as the departments of Commerce, State, and Agriculture, will keep export promotion as a priority. Obama also re-established the President’s Export Council, a presidential advisory committee on international trade, and named two prominent business leaders to lead it. They are Jim McNerney, president and CEO of The Boeing Co., and Xerox Co. CEO Ursula Burns.

More broadly, Obama is promising to increase financing and advocacy for American businesses to “locate, set up shop and win” in new markets. His plan promises to get tougher in ensuring that U.S. companies have fair access to those markets, and to streamline export procedures without diminishing security.

Business groups and pro-trade Republicans are waiting to see if Obama translates his words into actions, but achieving a doubling of exports, assuming some consistency in the global economy and currency exchange rates, is certainly possible. Exports of goods and services nearly doubled in the 1990s, and nearly doubled again more recently, going from about $1 trillion in 2003 to more than $1.8 trillion in 2008, according to the Census Bureau Foreign Trade Division.

Resistance to free trade deals runs deep among many Democrats, who contend they have contributed to a loss of jobs in this country while not doing enough to protect worker rights and the environment in the partner country. Specifically, there’s opposition to trade deals with Colombia because of violence against labor leaders there, Panama because of its status as a tax haven and South Korea because of its restrictions on U.S. beef and auto imports.

Obama must negotiate through all of that, while also showing leadership in the long-stalled, so-called “Doha round” of global trade talks.

“Our success is my by no means guaranteed,” he said. “But if we summon a sense of national purpose equal to the seriousness of these times; if we combine our creativity, our innovation, and our eternal optimism; if we come together in common cause as we have so many times before—then we will succeed.”

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Associated Press writer Ben Feller contributed to this story.

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The Transportation Department said Thursday that its projections show total traffic deaths declined nearly 9 percent in 2009—to 33,963. That’s the lowest toll since 1954. In 2008, an estimated 37,261 people died on the roadways.

The newest numbers fit into a trend of steady decreases since 2005, when an estimated 43,510 people were killed.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there are still too many deaths but credits the decline to more people wearing seat belts, programs to discourage drunken driving, and cars built with better safety features.

Side air bags that protect the head and midsection are becoming standard equipment on many new vehicles. And electronic stability control, which helps motorists avoid rollover crashes, is more common on new cars and trucks.

“We knew that those technologies would be reducing fatalities,” said Anne McCartt, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s senior vice president for research. “Vehicles are built to protect people better in crashes now.”

She also agreed that an increase in seat belt use could be a factor.

Seat belt use climbed to 84 percent in 2009, partly because of state efforts that let police stop a vehicle for a seat belt violation, even if this is the only violation an officer observes. States have also pushed tougher laws to reduce drunken driving.

In spite of the progress, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood cautioned that “there are still far too many people dying in traffic accidents. Drivers need to keep their hands on the steering wheel and their focus on the road in order to stay safe.”

The federal government has sought to crack down on distracted driving, urging states to adopt stringent laws against sending text messages from behind the wheel, as well as other distractions.

According to the Transportation Department’s distraction.gov Web site, using a cell phone has the same impact on a driver’s reaction times as a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent.

Part of the decrease in fatalities is credited to the economic downturn, which has fewer people out on the road. This theory is in line with similar patterns from the early 1980s and early 1990s, when difficult economic conditions led many drivers to cut back on discretionary travel, and traffic deaths decreased.

The number of miles traveled by American drivers in 2009 grew by 6.6 billion, or 0.2 percent, according to preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration. But this follows a dip in vehicle miles traveled in 2008 and 2007, when the economy was tanking.

Still, safety officials say the rate of deaths per 100 million miles traveled also dropped to a record low. It fell to 1.16 in 2009, compared with the previous record low of 1.25 the year before.

McCartt said that even though overall miles traveled seems to be coming back up, some categories of driving could carry more risk than others. For example, she speculated people could be doing essential driving to and from work, but cutting back on other types of trips, which could come with more distractions.

“My hope is that when the economy is healthy again, we won’t see a return to the kinds of rates we had before,” she said.

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On the Net:

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s report on traffic fatalities:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811291.PDF

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Debate began this week on a two-year, $34 billion bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration while imposing a host of safety and consumer measures.

Along the way, however, the bill ran into headwinds as senators sought to attach unrelated amendments to the bill on issues ranging from education to debt reduction. The bill is seen as a vehicle to pass measures unable to clear the Senate on their own.

The bill would require airlines to look at all of a pilot’s records, including previous tests of flying skills, before the pilot is hired. Another provision would require the FAA to beef up airlines’ pilot training programs.

The FAA administrator would also be required to perform surprise inspections of regional airlines at least once a year.

Over the past decade, major airlines have increasingly outsourced their short-haul flights to low-cost regional airlines, who often operate under a name similar to the major carrier. Continental Connection Flight 3407, which crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., on Feb. 12, 2009, was operated by regional carrier Colgan Air Inc. for Continental Airlines.

Regional airlines now account for over half of domestic departures and a quarter of all passengers. They are the only scheduled service to more than 400 communities. Major U.S. air carriers, suffering from the economic downturn, lost over $8 billion in 2009, but regional airlines recorded $200 million in profits, according to FAA.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board pinned the cause of the crash of Flight 3407 on a mistake by the flight’s captain, who responded incorrectly to the activation of a key piece of safety equipment, causing the plane to stall. But the board’s investigation also found that pilots weren’t being sufficiently trained on how to recover from a full stall. The captain had also failed numerous tests of his piloting skills before and after being hired by Colgan, but was allowed to retake the tests, which he ultimately passed. Colgan officials said they were unaware of most of the previous failures at the time the captain was hired. The accident revealed a gap in the safety record of regional airlines and major carriers.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he will offer an amendment to require airline co-pilots have a minimum of 1,500 hours of flight experience. Captains are already require to have that much experience, but co-pilots can have as few as 250 hours. The proposal is a priority for the family members of the victims of Flight 3407, who have made dozens of trips to Washington to lobby Congress. It’s opposed by the airline industry and flight schools, who fear it will cause students to bypass schools in an effort to earn flight hours as fast as they can.

Most major airlines already require more than 1,500 hours for both pilots, but regional carriers often hire less experienced pilots and pay them lower wages.

The bill also would double the frequency of FAA inspections of all foreign aircraft repair and maintenance stations that work on U.S. planes, requiring them twice a year instead of annually.

Airlines used to perform nearly all the major maintenance and repair work using their own workers. Over the last two decades, they have increasingly outsourced the work to domestic and foreign repair stations that use cheaper, nonunion labor.

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On the Net:

Federal Aviation Administration http://www.faa.gov

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