[Federal Register Volume 69, Number 66 (Tuesday, April 6, 2004)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 18015-18016]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 04-7795]


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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

49 CFR Part 571

[Docket No. NHTSA-2003-15715; Notice 2]
RIN 2127-AH73


Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Occupant Crash Protection

AGENCY: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 
Department of Transportation (DOT).

ACTION: Extension of comment period.

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SUMMARY: NHTSA received a letter asking us to extend the comment period 
for our request for comments notice regarding frontal offset testing. 
The notice intended to inform the public about recent testing the 
agency has conducted in consideration of whether to propose a high 
speed frontal offset crash test requirement. To provide interested 
persons additional time to prepare comments, we are extending the end 
of the comment period from April 5, 2004 to July 5, 2004.

DATES: Comments must be received by July 5, 2004.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments (identified by the docket number set 
forth above) by any of the following methods:
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.
     Web Site: http://dms.dot.gov. Follow the 
instructions for submitting comments on the DOT electronic docket site. 
Please note, if you are submitting petitions electronically as a PDF 
(Adobe) file, we ask that the documents submitted be scanned using 
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process, thus allowing the agency 
to search and copy certain portions of your submissions.\1\
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    \1\ Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of 
converting an image of text, such as a scanned paper document or 
electronic fax file, into computer-editable text.
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     Fax: 1-202-493-2251.
     Mail: Docket Management Facility; U.S. 
Department of Transportation, 400 Seventh Street, SW., Nassif Building, 
Room PL-401, Washington, DC 20590-001.
     Hand Delivery: Room PL-401 on the plaza level of 
the Nassif Building, 400 Seventh Street, SW., Washington, DC, between 9 
a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.
    Instructions: All submissions must include the agency name and 
docket number or Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this 
rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to 
http://dms.dot.gov, including any personal information provided. For 
detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information 
on the rulemaking process, see the Privacy Act heading of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this document.
    Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or 
comments received, go to http://dms.dot.gov at any time or to Room PL-
401 on the plaza level of the Nassif Building, 400 Seventh Street, SW., 
Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, 
except Federal holidays.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 
    The following persons at the National Highway Traffic Safety 
Administration, 400 Seventh Street, SW., Washington, DC 20590 can be 
contacted.
    For non-legal issues: Mr. John Lee, Office of Crashworthiness 
Standards, NVS-112. Telephone: (202) 366-2264. Fax: (202) 493-2739. 
Electronic mail: [email protected].
    For legal issues: Rebecca MacPherson, Office of the Chief Counsel, 
NCC-112. Telephone: (202) 366-2992. Fax: (202) 366-3820.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On February 3, 2004, NHTSA published in the 
Federal Register (69 FR 5108) a request for comments notice regarding 
frontal offset testing. The notice

[[Page 18016]]

intended to inform the public about recent testing the agency has 
conducted in consideration of whether to propose a fixed offset 
deformable barrier crash test in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 
(FMVSS) No. 208, ``Occupant crash protection,'' for improving frontal 
crash protection. In fiscal year 1997, the U.S. House of 
Representatives directed the National Highway Traffic Safety 
Administration (NHTSA) to work toward ``establishing a federal motor 
vehicle safety standard for frontal offset crash testing.'' Since then, 
frontal offset crash tests have been adopted for New Car Assessment 
Programs in several countries worldwide. Additionally, in the U.S., the 
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety began a consumer crashworthiness 
ratings program in 1995 that included a fixed offset deformable barrier 
crash test.
    Based on the agency's testing as of January 2004, we preliminarily 
determined in the February notice that the benefits from such a crash 
test could lead to an annual reduction in approximately 1,300 to 8,000 
MAIS 2+ lower extremity injuries. NHTSA also conducted vehicle-to-
vehicle crash tests to investigate the potential for disbenefits from a 
fixed offset deformable barrier crash test requirement. The testing 
demonstrated that, for some sport utility vehicles, design changes that 
improved their performance in high speed frontal offset crash tests may 
also result in adverse effects on the occupants of their collision 
partners. The agency requested comments on additional tests the agency 
planned to conduct to further evaluate the potential disbenefits, and 
posed some alternative strategies that could be coupled with a frontal 
offset crash test requirement. We established a comment closing date of 
April 5, 2004.
    On March 19, 2004, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers 
(Alliance) requested a 90-day extension of the comment period, to July 
5, 2004. The Alliance noted that NHTSA has not placed its preliminary 
safety benefits analysis and complete submission of crash test data in 
the public docket. For that reason, it stated that the public cannot 
address these issues. The Alliance further stated that the public 
should have an adequate period of time to comment after these analyses 
have been submitted to the docket. It stated that these actions cannot 
occur within the currently specified 60-day comment period.
    The Alliance also stated that its member companies would like to 
provide the agency with additional data and analyses on issues 
discussed in the request for comments notice. Specifically, the 
Alliance discussed reviewing field data on the causes and sources of 
lower-extremity injuries, gathering and evaluating manufacturer crash 
test and dummy lower-extremity injury data, and evaluating existing 
crash test alternatives to the fixed offset deformable barrier tests to 
assess both lower extremity safety benefits and potential crash 
compatibility safety disbenefits. The Alliance stated that it requires 
an additional 90 days to compile and analyze this information.
    After considering the Alliance's request, we have decided that it 
would be in the public's interest to extend the comment period to 
obtain as much data as possible. The Alliance may provide additional 
tests and analyses to better understand the issues cited in the request 
for comments notice. There is also a public interest in having the 
views of the public be as informed as possible. While we note that the 
additional NHTSA crash tests have since been completed and docketed 
during the original 60-day comment period, we acknowledge that 
insufficient time was allocated for the public to analyze and comment 
on the results of these tests. We have also recently docketed 
additional details regarding our preliminary safety benefits 
estimations. Therefore, we believe that providing additional time for 
the public to analyze these sources of information, in addition to any 
additional analyses provided by the Alliance, will result in more 
helpful comments.
    Privacy Act: Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all 
submissions received into any of our dockets by the name of the 
individual submitting the comment or petition (or signing the comment 
or petition, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor 
union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in 
the Federal Register published on April 11, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 70; 
Pages 19477-78) or you may visit http://dms.dot.gov.


    Authority: 49 U.S.C. 322, 30111, 30115, 30117, and 30166; 
delegation of authority at 49 CFR 1.50.

    Issued: April 1, 2004.
Stephen R. Kratzke,
Associate Administrator for Rulemaking.
[FR Doc. 04-7795 Filed 4-5-04; 8:45 am]
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