Record Retention Requirement

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 576</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2019-0035]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AL81</RIN> <SUBJECT>Record Retention Requirement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule is being issued pursuant to the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which requires the Secretary of Transportation (Secretary) to extend the period of time manufacturers of motor vehicles, child restraint systems, and tires must retain records concerning malfunctions that may be related to motor vehicle safety under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (Safety Act). Section 24403 of the FAST Act directs the Secretary to issue a rule increasing the record retention period to not less than 10 years, instead of 5 years, as presently required under the regulatory provisions. Pursuant to its delegated authority, NHTSA is updating its regulations in accordance with this mandate to extend the time that manufacturers are required to retain certain records that may be related to motor vehicle safety to 10 years. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule is effective October 15, 2024. <E T="03">Petitions for reconsideration:</E> Petitions for reconsideration of this final rule must be received not later than September 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Any petitions for reconsideration should refer to the docket number of this document and be submitted to: Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Fourth Floor, Washington, DC 20590. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Kuppersmith, Trial Attorney, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590 (telephone: (202) 366-2992). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Record Retention Requirements Under the Safety Act Prior to the FAST Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. The Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> The FAST Act was signed into law on December 4, 2015. Public Law 114-94. Section 24403 of the FAST Act directs the Secretary of Transportation to increase the amount of time manufacturers of motor vehicles, child restraint systems, and tires are required to maintain records that contain information concerning malfunctions that may be related to motor vehicle safety. In the final rule, the Secretary must lengthen the time that manufacturers must maintain these records to not less than 10 years from the date the records were generated or acquired. Public Law 114-94, sec. 24403(a). In May 2019, NHTSA proposed amending its regulation to increase the retention period to 10 years and is now finalizing that proposal. Based on NHTSA's experience investigating potential defects, overseeing recalls, and our consideration of the comments, we have determined that finalizing the proposed 10-year records retention requirement would help address the agency's investigative needs while minimizing the burden to manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment. Thus, this final rule extends the record retention requirement for records required to be maintained under 49 CFR 576.6 to 10 years. NHTSA may consider further extending the retention period in the future. This final rule does not require manufacturers to retain any new information; it merely requires manufacturers to retain information they are already required to retain under 49 CFR part 576 for a longer period of time. This final rule also does not extend the time period that manufacturers of motor vehicles and motor equipment are required to retain records underlying information reported under 49 CFR part 579. In accordance with the FAST Act, the extended time period applies to records in manufacturers' possession on the effective date of this rule and records generated or acquired in the future. Public Law 114-94, sec. 24403(b). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Record Retention Requirements Under the Safety Act Prior to the FAST Act</HD> Part 576 requires manufacturers of motor vehicles, child restraint systems, and tires to retain “all documentary materials, films, tapes, and other information-storing media that contain information concerning malfunctions that may be related to motor vehicle safety.” 49 CFR 576.6; <E T="03">see</E> 49 CFR 576.5(a). These records must be maintained for use in the investigation and disposition of possible defects related to motor vehicle safety or noncompliance with safety standards and associated regulations. 49 CFR 576.2. Manufacturers of motor vehicles, child restraint systems, and tires must currently keep the records required to be maintained by 49 CFR 576.6 for 5 years after they are generated or acquired. 49 CFR 576.5(a). Manufacturers of motor vehicles and all manufacturers of motor vehicle equipment must also keep documents underlying reporting required by 49 CFR part 579 for 5 years after they are generated or acquired. 49 CFR 576.5(b). However, according to 49 CFR 576.5(c), manufacturers of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment are not required to keep copies of documents reported to NHTSA as required by 49 CFR parts 573, 577, and 579. No manufacturer is required to keep duplicates according to 49 CFR 576.7. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</HD> In the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), published May 15, 2019, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> NHTSA proposed that manufacturers of motor vehicles, child restraint systems, and tires be required to retain records concerning malfunctions that may be related to motor vehicle safety for 10 years. The NPRM stated that the proposal was based on NHTSA's experience with the increasing age of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment and the importance of records from manufacturers, balanced against the agency's desire to avoid unnecessarily burdening manufacturers of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment. The NPRM stated that it was NHTSA's belief that a records retention period of 10 years would ensure that manufacturers would preserve records that NHTSA needs to conduct defect investigations without imposing an undue record retention burden on manufacturers. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  84 FR 21741. </FTNT> The NPRM requested comment on manufacturers' current records retention practices; the burden of increasing the records retention period for records required to be maintained by 49 CFR 576.6 to 15, 20, or 25 years; costs that might be associated with storage of electronic records; and the total volume of records retained pursuant to part 576 by a manufacturer. The NPRM noted that while the average age of the vehicle fleet was 11.6 years in 2016, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> a 10-year long records retention period is of significant length when compared to records retention periods of similar scope of other operating administrations within the United States Department of Transportation and other federal agencies that regulate motor vehicles and child products. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The NPRM recognized that, as the length of time that vehicles remain on the road has increased in recent years, the amount of information generated and retained by vehicle manufacturers has also increased. Thus, extending the records retention requirement increases the total volume of information that must be stored. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  84 FR 21742. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> (citing Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Environmental Protection Agency requirements). </FTNT> The NPRM also noted that manufacturers of child restraint systems and tires would also be bound by a lengthened retention period in part 576 even though the free remedy period for tires is 5 years and the useful life of tires and child restraint systems is often less than 10 years. The NPRM also discussed the several instances in which NHTSA has declined to extend the records retention period in part 576 to correspond to the free remedy period for recalls in 49 U.S.C. 30120. The NPRM stated that, based on NHTSA's experience investigating potential defects and overseeing recalls, many manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment already retain some of the records subject to this rule for periods of time longer than the current 5-year minimum. In response to the NPRM, NHTSA received comments from the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA), the Center for Auto Safety, and the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA). USTMA stated that it opposed any recordkeeping requirement applicable to tire manufacturers of a period longer than 10 years. USTMA stated that use cases for tires and the typical life span of tire models demonstrates that there is not sufficient justification to extend the records retention requirement longer than 10 years. USTMA further stated that an estimated 80 percent of tires are removed from service on a vehicle within 6 years of manufacture and more than 60 percent of tires are removed from service in fewer than 4 years after their manufacture. USTMA states that while the age of the U.S. vehicle fleet has increased, tire replacement rates have remained static despite improved tire technology because of increases in the total number ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━