Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval; Motorcycle Crash Avoidance Technology Review

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2024-0024]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval; Motorcycle Crash Avoidance Technology Review</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice and request for comments on a request for approval of a new information collection. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), this notice announces that the Information Collection Request (ICR) summarized below will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. This document describes a new collection of information for which NHTSA intends to seek OMB approval titled “Motorcycle Crash Avoidance Technology Review.” The new information collection would be a one-time, voluntary, and anonymous survey of motorcycle riders to obtain consumer-reported feedback and perspectives on the use and availability of advanced crash avoidance motorcycle technologies. A <E T="04">Federal Register</E> Notice with a 60-day comment period soliciting comments on the following information collection was published on June 12, 2024. Three comments were received during the comment period. This 30-day notice includes a summary of those comments and responses. NHTSA has addressed these comments, but there are no resulting changes to the estimated burden. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be submitted on or before May 30, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection, including suggestions for reducing burden, should be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget at <E T="03">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> To find this particular information collection, select “Currently under Review—Open for Public Comment” or use the search function. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For additional information or access to background documents, contact Mr. Ryan Rahimpour, NHTSA, Office of Vehicle Safety Research, (202) 366-8756, W46-432, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, <E T="03">Ryan.rahimpour@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Under the PRA (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), a Federal agency must receive approval from OMB before it collects certain information from the public, and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information by a Federal agency unless the collection displays a valid OMB control number. In compliance with these requirements, this notice announces that the following information collection request will be submitted OMB. <E T="03">Title:</E> Motorcycle Crash Avoidance Technology Review. <E T="03">OMB Control Number:</E> New. <E T="03">Form Number(s):</E> Eligibility Questionnaire, NHTSA Form 1811; Informed Consent, NHTSA Form 1812; Full Questionnaire, NHTSA Form 1813. <E T="03">Type of Request:</E> New information collection. <E T="03">Type of Review Requested:</E> Regular. <E T="03">Length of Approval Requested:</E> One year from date of approval. <E T="03">Summary of the Collection of Information:</E> NHTSA is seeking approval to conduct three voluntary, one-time information collections that would be part of a survey of motorcycle riders to obtain consumer-reported feedback and perspectives on the use and availability of advanced crash avoidance motorcycle technologies. These information collections will be administered to a convenience sample of motorcycle riders and will collect information on current consumer perceptions of the utility and availability of the technologies, including consumer willingness to use advanced safety technology on motorcycles and how various contextual factors will impact that willingness to use. This collection is part of a larger effort to gather data and summarize the scope of motorcycle crashes, estimate the prevalence of different crash avoidance technologies available in the fleet, understand the crash avoidance technologies under development, and identify perspectives on advanced motorcycle technologies. The three information collections include (1) an eligibility questionnaire; (2) an informed consent form; and (3) the survey questionnaire. The survey will ask respondents for background information on themselves (demographics, riding behavior, and safety habits like helmet use) to gauge whether knowledge and beliefs about motorcycle systems differ by any of these variables. The survey will ask respondents about their knowledge and beliefs regarding motorcycle safety technology using open-ended questions. These questions will assess consumer willingness to use various motorcycle technologies and their perspectives on the impact of various contextual factors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> personal beliefs, mandates, costs). • Technologies include braking systems (anti-lock braking, combined braking, automatic emergency braking); warning systems (lane departure, blind spot, curve speed, forward collision, and rear collision); and control systems (stability control and wheelie control). • Open-ended questions aim to gather unbiased perspectives and allow a measure of accuracy of information available to consumers and users. Additionally, overall thoughts on technologies provide insight into user acceptance and can be evaluated by demographics and user characteristics. • Willingness to purchase and use technologies provides perspective for incentivized incorporation of technologies and potential disengagement or modification to make inoperative. • Cost considerations provide insight for potential policy decisions as they relate to cost-benefit analyses. <E T="03">Description of the Need for the Information and Proposed Use of the Information:</E> NHTSA's mission is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce the economic costs of road traffic crashes through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement activity. Subchapter V of Chapter 301 of Title 49 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to conduct “motor vehicle safety research, development, and testing programs and activities, including activities related to new and emerging technologies that impact or may impact motor vehicle safety” (49 U.S.C. 30182). Pursuant to Section 1.95 of Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the Secretary has delegated this authority to NHTSA. As crash avoidance technologies advance, they have the potential to reduce the loss of life in roadway crashes. NHTSA is looking to gather information regarding consumer use and understanding of current advanced safety technology on motorcycles. The results of the information collection will help NHTSA better understand consumer-based barriers and facilitators to advanced motorcycle crash avoidance technology deployment. By understanding these barriers and facilitators, NHTSA can better develop related policy and consumer education materials to improve safety through the increased uptake and safe use of advanced technologies for motorcycles. <E T="03">60-Day Notice:</E> A <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice with a 60-day comment period soliciting public comments on the following information collection was published on June 12, 2024 (89 FR 50042) to which NHTSA received three comments. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) welcomed “any addition to the current state of knowledge in motorcyclist safety, [and they] strongly discourage[d] NHTSA from delaying possible rulemaking on motorcycle ABS by waiting for these survey results.” IIHS further supported public comment in the opportunity for individuals or organizations to provide feedback, regardless of selection for participation in the survey. IIHS referenced and appended its existing petition for rulemaking on FMVSS No. 122 and requested that the petition be granted. IIHS did not comment on the burden calculations or methodology of the information collection at hand. <E T="03">Response:</E> NHTSA acknowledges support for the collection of additional information regarding motorcyclist safety. The results of the consumer survey may be considered during contemplation of future research and Agency activities. NHTSA is reviewing the IIHS petition as part of the standard regulatory process. Because IIHS did not comment regarding burden calculation or methodology, no changes have been made to the survey design or instrument based on IIHS's comment. The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) provided a written comment in which they “support the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration seeking public comments on issues regarding motorcycle safety and safety technology.” The AMA emphasized the importance of direct feedback from the motorcycling community and expressed some previously stated concerns regarding emerging technology and interactions with motorcycles and motorcyclists. Specifically, AMA highlighted the concern regarding a lack of data on how AEB systems would respond to other vehicle types such as heavy vehicles or motorcycles, as included in NHTSA's May 2024 Final Rule on automatic emergency braking. Additionally, AMA suggested that information to be collected in the survey and motorcycle safety recommendations are available through other efforts organized by NHTSA. AMA referenced the first of seven meetings to update the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety (NAMS). They also referenced the newly reestablished Motorcyclist Advisory Council (MAC), which will “coo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━