DETROIT — Automakers have agreed to work on fundamental changes in their relationship with the U.S. government using the aviation industry as a model in order to get new safety technology to the marketplace faster, a top safety regulator said Tuesday.

The process of issuing government regulations to correct safety problems takes too many years, Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told reporters at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit. By the time the regulations are issued, changes in technology make them out of date, he said.

Rosekind alluded to the possibility that the auto industry will agree to safety culture changes and technology voluntarily rather than waiting for the arduous government rule-making process. He said that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx gave him a mandate to identify barriers in regulations and other areas that prevent new life-saving technology from going into cars quickly, and then figure out how to remove barriers to move faster.

Federal officials are grappling with how to get new technology such as vehicle-to-vehicle communications, also called V2V, and self-driving cars into the marketplace. V2V involves cars using wireless communications to send information like speed and direction to surrounding cars. Cars can warn drivers of an impending collision or even brake to prevent a collision before the driver has even seen the other vehicle.