Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Rear Impact Guards; Rear Impact Protection

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 571</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2022-0053]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Rear Impact Guards; Rear Impact Protection</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Response to petition for reconsideration. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document denies a petition, submitted by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Parents Against Tired Truckers, for reconsideration of a final rule amending Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 223, “Rear impact guards,” and FMVSS No. 224, “Rear impact protection.” The final rule, published on July 15, 2022, upgraded NHTSA's standards addressing rear underride protection in crashes of passenger vehicles into trailers and semitrailers by requiring rear impact guards to provide sufficient strength and energy absorption to protect occupants of compact and subcompact passenger cars impacting the rear of trailers at 56 kilometers per hour (km/h) (35 miles per hour (mph)). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> June 28, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For technical issues:</E> Ms. Lina Valivullah, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590, (telephone) (202) 366-8786, (email) <E T="03">Lina.Valivullah@dot.gov.</E> <E T="03">For legal issues:</E> Ms. Callie Roach, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590, (telephone) (202) 366-2992, (email) <E T="03">Callie.Roach@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD>   <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The final rule addressing rear underride protection, which was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 15, 2022, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> upgraded NHTSA's safety standards for rear underride protection in crashes of passenger vehicles into trailers and semitrailers by adopting requirements similar to Transport Canada's standard for rear impact guards. With this final rule, the standards now require rear impact guards to provide sufficient strength and energy absorption to protect occupants of compact and subcompact passenger cars impacting the rear of trailers at 56 kilometers per hour (km/h) (35 miles per hour (mph)). The final rule provides upgraded protection for crashes in which a passenger motor vehicle hits the rear of the trailer or semitrailer such that 50 to 100 percent of the width of the passenger motor vehicle overlaps the rear of the trailer or semitrailer. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  87 FR 42339. </FTNT> NHTSA initiated this rulemaking in response to petitions for rulemaking from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and from Ms. Marianne Karth and the Truck Safety Coalition. The final rule also responded to and fulfilled the rulemaking mandate of Section 23011(b)(1)(A) of the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, Public Law 117-58 (commonly referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or BIL), which directs the Secretary (by delegation, NHTSA) to upgrade the Federal safety standards for rear impact guards. NHTSA also issued the final rule in accordance with DOT's January 2022 National Roadway Safety Strategy, which describes the five key objectives of the Department's Safe System Approach: safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds, and post-crash care. One of the key Departmental actions to enable safer vehicles was to issue a final rule to upgrade existing requirements for rear impact guards on newly manufactured trailers and semitrailers. In accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> NHTSA's regulations specify, at 49 CFR 553.35, that any interested person may petition NHTSA for reconsideration of any final rule by filing a petition within 45 days after publication of the final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . As required by 49 CFR 553.35(a), the petition must contain a brief statement of the complaint and an explanation why compliance with the rule is not practicable, is unreasonable, or is not in the public interest. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  5 U.S.C. 553(e) requires that each agency provide interested persons the right to petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Petitions for Reconsideration</HD> NHTSA received two petitions in response to the final rule. The first petition was submitted by Jerry and Marianne Karth, Aaron Kiefer, Eric Hein, Lois Durso-Hawkins, Andy Young, and Garrett Mattos and dated July 15, 2022. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> That petition did not meet the requirements in 49 CFR part 553 for a petition for reconsideration and NHTSA will instead treat and respond to it as a petition for rulemaking in a separate notice. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Docket No. NHTSA-2022-0053-0003, document titled “Petition for Reconsideration of the Rear Impact Guard Rule (July 2022)”, <E T="03">available at https://www.regulations.gov/document/NHTSA-2022-0053-0003.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  While it was submitted as a petition for reconsideration of the final rule, the petition did not explain “why compliance with the rule is not practicable, is unreasonable, or is not in the public interest,” as required by 49 CFR part 553. In addition, the petitioners did not assert that the requirements established by the final rule should be stayed or revoked. For these reasons, the petition does not meet the requirements in 49 CFR part 553 for a petition for reconsideration. </FTNT> The second petition, dated August 25, 2022, was submitted by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates), the Truck Safety Coalition (TSC), Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH), and Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT), referred to collectively as “Advocates et al.” throughout this document. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The petitioners disagreed with the data and analysis that the agency used for the final rule and asserted that NHTSA should require reinforced rear guards designed for the 30 percent overlap crash condition. The petitioners stated that the lesser requirements established by the final rule are “inadequate and dangerous” and will increase market demand for weaker guards, leading to additional fatalities. The petitioners asserted that the final rule is not in the public interest and requested a stay of the effective date. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Docket No. NHTSA-2022-0053-0004, <E T="03">available at https://www.regulations.gov/document/NHTSA-2022-0053-0004.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Response to Petition</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">a. Crash Data and Underreporting</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Petitioners' Assertions</HD> The petitioners claimed that NHTSA did not fully consider the available data on underride crashes. They cited statistics regarding the number of fatal large truck crashes in recent years, the cost of crashes involving trucks and buses, and the occupational hazards of truck driving. They asserted that NHTSA's data analysis was incorrect because it relied on a single University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) study and did not account for underreporting of underride crashes. They claimed that the UMTRI study was faulty due to its use of police reports and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which they assert do not properly identify underride crashes. The petitioners also stated that NHTSA ignored recommendations from IIHS, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regarding underride data collection, including the 2019 GAO recommendation  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> to include underride in the Minimum Modal Uniform Crash Criteria. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Government Accountability Office. 2019. Truck underride guards: Improved data collection, inspections, and research needed. GAO-19-264. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Agency Response</HD> The petitioners raised substantially similar points in comments they submitted during the rulemaking process. NHTSA carefully reviewed all information submitted by the petitioners and commenters throughout the rulemaking process to inform the final rule. The agency gave full consideration to the comments submitted in response to the NPRM, including those regarding underride crash data and underreporting. No new data was provided in this petition for reconsideration; the statistics cited by Advocates et al. are not specific to truck crashes with light passenger vehicles and do not provide information on underride. The concerns raised about the data on rear underride crashes used to inform rulemaking were addressed in the preamble to the final rule. As explained in the preamble (at 87 FR 42354), NHTSA's analysis did not rely on underride coding in FARS or in police reports, and instead used TIFA  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> data with supplemental information reported in the 2013 UMTRI Study. The TIFA database has greater accuracy than FARS for all medium and heavy trucks involved in fatal traffic crashes, providing more detailed information on the involved large trucks, motor carriers, and sequence of events. The 2013 UMTRI Study analyzed crash information to determine if the crashes might have been underride crashes even when they were not categorized as such in the police reports and in FARS. The study gathered additional information on the rear geometry of single unit trucks and trailers, the configuration of rear impact guard ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━