Big break: Leaving a nearly 20-year career with the federal government for a role with Mazda, which allowed her to effect greater changes in vehicle safety

When Jennifer Morrison decided to leave her nearly 20-year career with the federal government for a role with Mazda, she was determined to broaden her reach in vehicle safety.

Morrison joined Mazda North American Operations in 2018 as manager of vehicle safety, compliance, planning & development — her first role in the private sector after working as a defects investigator at NHTSA and, more recently, as a crash investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

With the NTSB, she spent more than 15 years seeing the carnage on U.S. roadways firsthand and how traffic fatalities and life-altering injuries affect victims and their families.

“I really enjoyed that role, but I felt that there needed to be a shift,” said Morrison, explaining that she wanted to effect greater changes by researching and developing technologies that can further advance vehicle safety.

“What can we actually do to fix this?” she asked. “Because going out to these crash sites repeatedly, I just didn’t feel like I was fixing anything necessarily.”

Now — from Mazda’s office in Washington, D.C. — Morrison oversees compliance with federal safety regulations, manages consumer safety ratings programs and directs safety research, including the development of advanced driver-assistance systems for all of the Japanese automaker’s U.S. vehicles. 

A major challenge of her work, she said, is developing more advanced safety technologies such as driver-assistance systems in the absence, and anticipation, of federal regulations. 

“The technology is moving quickly, and we have to make decisions now. We cannot wait for the government to regulate these areas,” she said. “We see regulations as a low bar. We want to be designing and engineering to a much higher standard.”

To do so, Morrison has been closely following and working alongside groups such as SAE International and staying on top of safety ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program.

Morrison’s team recently received the first-ever Mazda Corp. Research & Development Award for Mazda North America. The team was selected for the automaker’s highest award — Challenger of the Year — for its collaboration with IIHS on a tougher side-crash test that uses a heavier barrier traveling at a higher speed to simulate the striking vehicle, more closely mirroring real-world crashes.

The 2021 Mazda CX-5 was the only vehicle to achieve a “good” overall rating in the small SUV category in the institute’s first tests of 2020-21 models.

“We did not know that we were going to come out as No. 1 on that. We just knew that our vehicle had a very robust design, and we felt that we would perform well in this new, tougher test,” Morrison said. “What a wonderful day when we found that out.” 

— Audrey LaForest