Receipt of Petition for Temporary Exemption From Shoulder Belt Requirement for Side-Facing Seats on Motorcoaches

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2024-0068]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Receipt of Petition for Temporary Exemption From Shoulder Belt Requirement for Side-Facing Seats on Motorcoaches</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of receipt of petition for temporary exemption; request for public comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Legacy Limousines and Luxury Coaches has petitioned NHTSA for a temporary exemption from the requirement to install Type 2 seat belts ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> shoulder belts) at side-facing locations in the company's motorcoaches. The petitioner is a final-stage manufacturer of entertainer-type motorcoaches, seeking temporary exemption from the shoulder belt requirement of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, “Occupant crash protection,” for side-facing seats on motorcoaches. The petitioner seeks to install Type 1 seat belts (lap belt only) at side-facing seating positions, instead of the Type 2 seat belts (lap and shoulder belts) required by FMVSS No. 208. The petitioner states that, absent the requested exemption, it will otherwise be unable to sell a vehicle whose overall level of safety or impact protection is at least equal to that of a nonexempted vehicle. NHTSA is publishing this document to notify the public of the receipt of the petition and to request comment on it, in accordance with statutory and administrative provisions. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 4, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> NHTSA invites you to submit comments on the petition described herein and the questions posed below. You may submit comments identified by docket number in the heading of this notice by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M-30, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number. 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 discussion below. NHTSA will consider all comments received before the close of business on the comment closing date indicated above. To the extent possible, NHTSA will also consider comments filed after the closing date. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at any time or to 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, 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">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> In order 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. Whether or not commenters identify themselves, all timely comments will be fully considered. If you wish to provide comments containing proprietary or confidential information, please contact the agency for alternate submission instructions. <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> If you wish to submit any information under a claim of confidentiality, you must submit your request directly to NHTSA's Office of the Chief Counsel. Requests for confidentiality are governed by part 512. NHTSA is currently treating electronic submission as an acceptable method for submitting confidential business information to the agency under part 512. If you would like to submit a request for confidential treatment, you may email your submission to Dan Rabinovitz in the Office of the Chief Counsel at <E T="03">Daniel.Rabinovitz@dot.gov</E> or you may contact Dan for a secure file transfer link. At this time, you should not send a duplicate hardcopy of your electronic CBI submissions to DOT headquarters. If you claim that any of the information or documents provided to the agency constitute confidential business information within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4), or are protected from disclosure pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1905, you must submit supporting information together with the materials that are the subject of the confidentiality request, in accordance with part 512, to the Office of the Chief Counsel. Your request must include a cover letter setting forth the information specified in our confidential business information regulation (49 CFR 512.8) and a certificate, pursuant to § 512.4(b) and part 512, appendix A. In addition, you should submit a copy, from which you have deleted the claimed confidential business information, to the Docket at the address given above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sara R. Bennett, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone: (202) 366-2992; Fax: (202) 366-3820. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Authority and Procedures for Temporary Exemption</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. FMVSS No. 208</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Legacy Limousine and Luxury Coaches' Petition</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Public Participation</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> NHTSA is responsible for promulgating and enforcing Federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) designed to improve motor vehicle safety. Generally, a manufacturer may not manufacture for sale, sell, offer for sale, or introduce or deliver for introduction into interstate commerce a vehicle that does not comply with all applicable FMVSS. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> There are limited exceptions to this general prohibition. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> One path permits manufacturers to petition NHTSA for an exemption for noncompliant vehicles under a specified set of statutory bases. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The details of these bases, and under which basis Legacy Limousines and Luxury Coaches petitions, is provided in the sections of this notice that follow. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30112(a)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30112(b); 49 U.S.C. 30113; 49 U.S.C. 30114. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30113. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Authority and Procedures for Temporary Exemption</HD> The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (Safety Act), codified at 49 U.S.C. chapter 301, authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to exempt motor vehicles, on a temporary basis and under specified circumstances, and on terms the Secretary considers appropriate, from a FMVSS or bumper standard. This authority is set forth at 49 U.S.C. 30113. The Secretary has delegated the authority for implementing this section to NHTSA. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  49 CFR 1.95. </FTNT> The Safety Act authorizes the Secretary to grant, in whole or in part, a temporary exemption to a vehicle manufacturer if the Secretary makes one of four specified findings. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The Secretary must also look comprehensively at the request for exemption and find that the exemption is consistent with the public interest and with the objectives of the Safety Act. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30113(b)(3). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30113(b)(3)(A). </FTNT> The Secretary must evaluate the petition for exemption under at least one of the following bases: (i) Compliance would cause substantial economic hardship, and the manufacturer tried to comply in good faith; (ii) the exemption would make easier the development or field evaluation of a new motor vehicle safety feature, and the safety level is equal to the safety level of the standard; (iii) the exemption would make the development or field evaluation of a low-emission motor vehicle easier, and the safety leve of the vehicle is not unreasonably lowered; or (iv) compliance would prevent the manufacturer from selling a motor vehicle with an overall safety level at least equal to the overall safety level of nonexempt vehicles. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  49 U.S.C. 30113(b)(3)(B). </FTNT> NHTSA established 49 CFR part 555, <E T="03">Temporary Exemption from Motor Vehicle Safety and Bumper Standards,</E> to implement the statutory provisions concerning temporary exemptions. The requirements in 49 CFR 555.5 state that the petitioner must set forth the basis of the petition by providing the information required under 49 CFR 555.6, and the reasons why the exemption would be in the public interest and consistent with the objectives of the Safety Act. A petition submitted on the basis that the applicant is otherwise unable to sell (or in this instance, manufacture) a vehicle whose overall level of safety or i ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━