Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Side Impact Protection; Grant in Part, Denial in Part of Petition for Rulemaking

摘要

This document responds to a petition for rulemaking from the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the American Automobile Manufacturers Association. Petitioners asked us first to determine that dynamic side impact provisions of a European regulation (consisting of performance requirements, crash test barrier, test barrier face, and test procedures) are at least "functionally equivalent" to those in the U.S. side impact standard. Based on the assumption that that determination will be made, the petitioners then asked that we add the dynamic provisions of the European regulation to the U.S. standard as a compliance alternative in the short run. Based on their belief that the European dynamic provisions are superior to those in the U.S. standard in some respects, they want us to replace the current dynamic provisions of the U.S. standard with those of the European regulation (slightly modified) in the long run. This document grants the portion of the petition requesting that we open a rulemaking proceeding to consider replacing the side impact test dummy currently specified in the U.S. standard with an improved version