Anthropomorphic Test Devices, HIII 5TH Percentile Female Test Dummy; Incorporation by Reference

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 572</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2024-0093]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM13</RIN> <SUBJECT>Anthropomorphic Test Devices, HIII 5TH Percentile Female 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document revises the chest jacket and spine box specifications for the Hybrid III 5th Percentile Female Test Dummy (HIII-5F). The jacket revisions resolve discrepancies between the jacket specifications in subpart O and jackets available in the field, and ensure a sufficiently low level of variation between jackets fabricated by different manufacturers. The spine box revisions eliminate a source of signal noise caused by fasteners within the box that may become loose during sled or vehicle crash tests. This rulemaking responds to a petition for rulemaking from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule is effective on February 18, 2025. IBR date: The incorporation by reference of certain material listed in the rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of February 18, 2025. <E T="03">Petitions for reconsideration:</E> Petitions for reconsideration for this final rule must be received no later than February 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by the docket number in the heading of this document or by any of the following methods: • Petitions for reconsideration of this final rule must refer to the docket and notice number set forth above and be submitted to the Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. Note that all petitions received will be posted without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. • <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> If you wish to submit any information under a claim of confidentiality, you should submit your complete submission, including the information you claim to be confidential business information, to the Chief Counsel, NHTSA, at the address given under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . In addition, you should submit a copy, from which you have deleted the claimed confidential business information, to Docket Management at the address given above. When you send a submission containing information claimed to be confidential business information, you should include a cover letter setting forth the information specified in our confidential business information regulation (49 CFR part 512). Please see further information in the Regulatory Notices and Analyses section of this preamble. • <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> The petition will be placed in the docket. Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all documents 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 (65 FR 19476) or you may visit <E T="03">www.transportation.gov/individuals/privacy/privacy-act-system-records-notices</E> . In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its decision-making process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.transportation.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. • <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> at any time or the street address listed above. Follow the online instructions for accessing the dockets. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical issues, you may contact Mr. Garry Brock, Office of Crashworthiness Standards; phone: (202) 366-6198. For legal issues, you may contact Ms. K. Helena Sung, Office of Chief Counsel; phone: (202) 366-2992. The mailing address of these officials is: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. </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. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">a. Rulemaking History</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">b. Chest Jacket</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">c. Spine Box</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Summary of the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Post-NPRM Measurement and Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Response to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">a. Dimensional Targets and the Use of Mandrel</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">b. Certification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">c. Annual Inspection Specification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">d. Other Measurement Device</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">e. Spine Box</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">f. Sample Size</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Changes to Drawing Package and PADI</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Housekeeping Amendments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Lead Time</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> This final rule finalizes changes to the Hybrid III 5th percentile adult female (HIII-5F) anthropomorphic test device (ATD or crash test dummy or dummy). The HIII-5F is used in frontal compliance crash tests and air bag static deployment tests, certification to which is required for certain vehicles by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, <E T="03">Occupant crash protection.</E> The dummy is described in 49 CFR part 572, subpart O. Among other things, subpart O incorporates by reference several documents that specify the physical make-up of the dummy. This document finalizes changes to the chest jacket and spine box specifications to address issues with the fit and availability of the jacket and a noise artifact from the spine box. Today's rulemaking responds to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturer's (the Alliance) 2014 petition for rulemaking. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Letter from Scott Schmidt, Alliance, to NHTSA (February 21, 2014). The Alliance consisted of: BMW Group; Chrysler Group LLC; Ford Motor Company; General Motors Company; Jaguar Land Rover; Mazda; Mercedes-Benz USA; Mitsubishi Motors; Porsche; Toyota; Volkswagen Group of America; and Volvo Cars. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Chest Jacket</HD> The chest jacket is a sleeveless foam-filled vinyl zippered jacket that represents human flesh, including female breasts. The chest jacket may need to be replaced because it can shrink or otherwise fall out of specification or wear out with age. Since the introduction of the HIII-5F into part 572 in 2000, none of the jackets that were manufactured met the jacket specifications specified in part 572. Since around 2006, NHTSA, in its own compliance tests, has used the brand of dummy and jacket (either First Technology Safety Systems (FTSS) or Denton ATD (Denton)) used by the vehicle manufacturer to certify the vehicle. However, these FTSS and Denton jackets are no longer being manufactured; manufacturers (or test laboratories) and NHTSA have, or will soon, run out of these jackets. In 2013, SAE  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/>  published an information report for the HIII-5F chest jacket, SAE J2921 JAN2013, <E T="03">H-III5F Chest Jacket Harmonization,</E> describing a new jacket compatible with FTSS and Denton dummies. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The Society of Automotive Engineers (now SAE International). SAE is an organization that develops technical standards based on best practices. </FTNT> The NPRM proposed to adopt the jacket specifications described in SAE J2921, as well as a few additional specifications. We believed that chest jackets that have been and are being manufactured to the SAE J2921 design would also conform to the proposed specifications. NHTSA also believed that additional specifications were necessary to ensure a sufficient level of uniformity between jackets produced by different manufacturers when other manufacturers enter the market, and to prevent the variances in jacket designs that were problematic in the past from reoccurring. Based on NHTSA's testing, the agency concluded that dummies fitted with chest jackets that satisfy the proposed specifications would perform equivalently to dummies fitted with the FTSS or Denton jackets that were previously used. A benefit of standardized jacket specifications would be that the agency would no longer have to maintain chest jackets of different designs and take steps to match the compliance test jacket with that specified by the vehicle manufacturer, thereby providing more objective test results. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Spine Box</HD> The spine box is the dummy's steel backbone. It is located in the dummy's thorax, which consists of six bands that simulate human ribs. Since the mid-2000s, industry and NHTSA have been aware of a signal noise artifact in the signals from the accelerometers in the thorax during sled and crash tests originating in the spine ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 114k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━