Anthropomorphic Test Devices; THOR 50th Percentile Adult Male Test Dummy; Incorporation by Reference

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 572</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2023-0031]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM20</RIN> <SUBJECT>Anthropomorphic Test Devices; THOR 50th Percentile Adult Male Test Dummy; Incorporation by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document announces the availability of documents supplementing NHTSA's September 2023 notice of proposed rulemaking to amend NHTSA's regulations to include an advanced crash test dummy, the Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint 50th percentile adult male. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The documents referenced in this notification will be available in the docket as of July 9, 2024.You should submit your comments early enough to be received not later than August 8, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments electronically to the docket identified in the heading of this document by visiting the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Alternatively, you can file comments using the following methods: • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 366-9826 before coming. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rulemaking. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the Public Participation heading of the Supplementary Information section of this document. Note that all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. Please see the Privacy Act heading below. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> You may also access the docket at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal Holidays. Telephone: (202) 366-9826. <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> If you claim that any of the information in your comment (including any additional documents or attachments) constitutes confidential business information within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4) or is protected from disclosure pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1905, please see the detailed instructions given under the Public Participation heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice, DOT/ALL-14 FDMS, accessible through <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> To facilitate comment tracking and response, we encourage commenters to provide their name, or the name of their organization; however, submission of names is completely optional. Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> published on April 11, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 70; Pages 19477-78). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For non-legal issues, you may contact Mr. Garry Brock, Office of Crashworthiness Standards, Telephone: (202) 366-1740; Email: <E T="03">Garry.Brock@dot.gov;</E> Facsimile: (202) 493-2739. For legal issues, you may contact Mr. John Piazza, Office of Chief Counsel, Telephone: (202) 366-2992; Email: <E T="03">John.Piazza@dot.gov;</E> Facsimile: (202) 366-3820. The address of these officials is: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, 20590. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On September 7, 2023, NHTSA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to amend NHTSA's regulations to include an advanced crash test dummy, the Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint (THOR) 50th percentile adult male (THOR-50M). The dummy represents an adult male of roughly average height and weight and is designed for use in frontal crash tests. The documentation for the dummy, including detailed design information, engineering drawings, qualification tests, and procedures for assembly and inspection, would be incorporated by reference in 49 CFR part 572, Anthropomorphic Test Devices. This document notices the availability of additional research reports and a memorandum of understanding that are being placed in the research and rulemaking dockets, respectively. These documents are briefly described below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Research Reports</HD> The NPRM referenced a variety of research NHTSA had conducted to support the development of the THOR-50M dummy. Most of this research was published or made available in the research docket before the NPRM was published. However, the NPRM noted that research in several areas was ongoing and that additional research reports would be docketed after the NPRM was published. That research has been completed and NHTSA is now docketing the associated research reports. As we did for other research reports and documentation referenced in the NPRM, these reports are being placed in the research docket, Docket No. NHTSA-2019-0106, and not the docket for this rulemaking. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Nevertheless, NHTSA intends these documents to be included as part of the rulemaking record for this rulemaking action. The following documents are being docketed: <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  As we explained in the NPRM, NHTSA did not place the dummy documentation and related research reports in the docket for this rulemaking action to avoid potential confusion from having identical documents docketed at different times in different dockets. A memorandum explaining this determination was docketed along with the NPRM. </FTNT> • “Comparison of the THOR-50M IR-TRACC Measurement Device to an Alternative S-Track Measurement Device” • “Analysis of THOR-50M Alternate Configurations in Gold Standard Sled Testing” • “Development of an Alternative Shoulder for the THOR-50M” • “THOR-50M In-dummy Data Acquisition System Evaluation” <HD SOURCE="HD1">Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Intellectual Property of Humanetics</HD> NHTSA is also placing in the rulemaking docket a memorandum of understanding between NHTSA and Humanetics concerning the use of Humanetics proprietary information in NHTSA rulemaking activities. Humanetics is a global industrial technology group (including Human Solutions, Avalution, mg-sensors, ADT-LabTech, Fibercore, HITEC Sensor Development, and OpTek Systems) that, among other things, develops and manufacturers crash test dummies and components used in those dummies. As NHTSA explained in the NPRM, portions of the shoulder assembly specified in the 2018 drawing package (referred to as the SD-3 shoulder) are covered by a patent issued to Humanetics. NHTSA has generally avoided specifying in part 572 patented components or copyrighted designs without either securing agreement from the rights-holder for the free use of (or reasonable license to) the item or developing an alternative unencumbered by any rights claims. In the NPRM, NHTSA explained the reasons for taking this position. Among other things, proprietary components may be modified by the proprietary source such that the original is no longer available, and the new part no longer fits. The proprietary source also may alter the part in ways that change the response of the dummy, such that dummies with the newer part do not provide the same response as dummies with the older part. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See Section VIII of the NPRM. </FTNT> NHTSA therefore designed, built, and tested an alternative design for a part of the shoulder assembly referred to as the shoulder pivot assembly that is not subject to any intellectual property claims. The proposed drawing package (the 2023 drawing package) included specifications for the SD-3 shoulder pivot assembly as well as the alternate shoulder pivot assembly so that NHTSA could use either one. In the NPRM, NHTSA specifically solicited comment on whether the final drawing package should include the SD-3 shoulder, the alternate shoulder, or both. After the NPRM was published, NHTSA staff discussed with Humanetics the disposition of its intellectual property claims on various anthropomorphic test devices, including the THOR-50M. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Humanetics' designs and drawings may include information that is subject to patent rights and/or copyrights. Based on these discussions, NHTSA and Humanetics reached the following understanding with respect to Humanetics proprietary information used either in an NPRM or final rule. (Below we briefly summarize this understanding; the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━