Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 204; Steering Control Rearward Displacement

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 571</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2025-0032]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM84</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 204; Steering Control Rearward Displacement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to amend Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 204, Steering Control Rearward Displacement, so that it no longer applies to vehicles that are certified to the frontal barrier crash protection requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, Occupant Crash Protection. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received within 60 days of May 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <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">https://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. Regardless of how you submit your comments, you should mention the docket number identified in the heading of this document. <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 <E T="02">Supplementary Information</E> section of this document. Note that all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://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">https://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> Please see the Privacy Act heading under the Regulatory Analyses section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical issues, you may contact Garry Brock at <E T="03">garry.brock@dot.gov.</E> For legal issues, you may contact John Piazza at <E T="03">John.Piazza@dot.gov.</E> You can reach these officials by phone at 202-366-1810. Address: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to amend Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 204, Steering Control Rearward Displacement. This safety standard specifies requirements that limit the rearward displacement of the steering column in a frontal crash. We propose to exclude vehicles from having to comply with FMVSS No. 204 if they are certified to the frontal barrier crash protection requirements of FMVSS No. 208. We seek comment on all aspects of this proposal. FMVSS No. 204 specifies requirements that limit the rearward motion of the steering column in a frontal crash. The standard currently applies to passenger vehicles, trucks, and buses (except for walk-in vans or vehicles without steering controls). Vehicles are subjected to a 30 mile per hour frontal barrier crash test. The upper end of the steering column and shaft cannot be displaced more than 5 inches (127 mm) horizontally as a result of the crash test. FMVSS No. 204 is one of the original safety standards that went into effect on January 1, 1968 (23 FR 2408). Motion of the steering column, and specifically motion of a collapsable steering column (or energy absorbing steering column), were analyzed with FMVSS No. 204 being used in conjunction with FMVSS No. 203, Impact protection for the driver from the steering control system. These two standards were developed to minimize head, neck and chest injuries to the vehicle driver as a result of an impact. In the time since the promulgation of FMVSS No. 204, significant advances have been made to the crashworthiness of motor vehicles. These include the development and use of air bags and advanced restraint systems. These standards also predate the use of Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATDs, or crash test dummies) within the FMVSS to assess vehicle performance. After FMVSS No. 203 was updated on November 29, 1979 (44 FR 68475), it no longer applied to vehicles that complied with the frontal barrier crash requirements of FMVSS Standard No. 208. This exclusion was warranted because the requirements of FMVSS No. 203 could prevent the potential future development of air bag systems. However, FMVSS No. 204 has not been similarly edited since its promulgation. On November 15, 1995, NHTSA published an NPRM proposing to exclude from compliance with FMSSS No. 204 passenger cars and other light vehicles certified to the frontal barrier crash test requirements of FMVSS No. 208 by means of an air bag. The basis for the 1995 NPRM was the belief that auto manufacturers would take into account the need for a stable platform for their air bag when designing a restraint system. A designer of an air bag equipped vehicle must know the relative location of the air bag and the protected occupant when setting up the design. Performance of the air bag could be adversely affected should the air bag move up, down, rearwards or forwards during a crash event. Given that the air bag is located at the end of the steering column, it was expected that the performance of the air bag would ensure sufficient consideration of the location of the end of the steering column. NHTSA also stated the belief that manufacturers take care to ensure that air bags are not too close to vehicle occupants due to the potential for injury caused by an air bag deploying too close to a person. In response to the 1995 NPRM, six total comments were received. Four commenters, the insurance institute for highway safety (IIHS), the American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AAMA), Volkswagen and Mitsubishi supported the proposal. Two commenters, the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and Mr. Lee F. Graser (a crash reconstructionist) both opposed the proposal. Mr. Graser opposed to update to FMVSS No. 204 on the basis of the success of FMVSS No. 204 in aiding occupant safety. The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety expressed concern that smaller occupants sit closer to the air bag, and motion of the air bag towards these occupants could create a greater risk of injury. The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety also argued that there was no supporting data for excluding vehicles from FMVSS No. 204 or the basis for concluding that manufacturers will continue prevent steering column displacement. IIHS provided comments that they supported the change to FMVSS No. 204. However, they also provided additional information with regards to small overlap collisions, noting that excessive motion of the steering wheel had been seen in small overlap collisions. IIHS noted that this may lead to an increased injury risk or unusual occupant kinematics. IIHS noted that steering column intrusion does occur in some crash types, and they urged NHTSA to promote research to determine the types of testing which best reveal the issue of steering column movement in vehicle collisions. On July 20, 1998, NHTSA terminated the rulemaking that would exclude certain vehicles from compliance with FMVSS No. 204 (63 FR 38799). At the time of the termination of rulemaking, NHTSA noted that FMVSS No. 208 had allowed for manufacturers to utilize sled testing for testing of depowered air bags, in place of an unbelted frontal crash test. The capability of the steering column is not tested in a sled test. Accordingly, without testing under FMVSS No. 204, there would be no method for determining the effect of any motion of the steering column. For these reasons, NHTSA ended the rulemaking and did not proceed with finalizing the change to FMVSS No. 204. NHTSA stated that, if circumstances change in the future, it would consider appropriate action. On July 28, 2004, Honda petitioned NHTSA to update FMVSS No. 204 to allow FMVSS No. 208 to take its place. Honda noted that the advanced air bag requirements in FMVSS No. 208 would be applied to all light vehicles beginning September 1, 2006, and that sled testing would not be allowed. NHTSA denied this petition on March 20, 2006, citing two reasons. First, the test speeds for unbelted t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━