Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard; No. 216; Roof Crush Resistance, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 216a; Roof Crush Resistance; Upgraded Standard

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 571</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2025-0039]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM90</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard; No. 216; Roof Crush Resistance, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 216a; Roof Crush Resistance; Upgraded Standard</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 remove the obsolete Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 216, related to roof crush resistance. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received July 29, 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 Supplementary Information 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 Supplementary Information 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 Carla Rush (email: <E T="03">carla.rush@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 remove the obsolete FMVSS No. 216, Roof crush resistance, Applicable unless a vehicle is certified to § 571.216a, which originally went into effect on September 1, 1973. It established strength requirements for the passenger compartment roof of vehicles. NHTSA has since implemented an updated roof crush resistance standard in FMVSS No. 216a, for which a multi-year phase-in required full compliance by Model Year 2016. Since FMVSS No. 216 is no longer necessary, we propose to remove it and modify FMVSS No. 216a to clarify its applicability. We seek comment on all aspects of this proposal. FMVSS No. 216 has been amended several times since its inception, such as extending the requirements, originally only for passenger cars, to multipurpose passenger vehicles (MPV) and modifying the quasi-static testing procedure. However, the most recent and substantial amendment occurred in 2009, which established FMVSS No. 216a as the upgraded version of FMVSS No. 216. The FMVSS No. 216a final rule was published in 2009 (74 FR 22348) and laid out a multi-year phase-in compliance requirement beginning in 2012 and full compliance by model year 2016. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Some of the major changes in FMVSS No. 216a included raising the Strength to Weight Ratio (SWR) threshold from 1.5 to 3.0 for passenger cars, changing from a one-sided to a two-sided test, expanding to heavier passenger vehicles (GVWR greater than 6,000 lb to 10,000 lb or less) with the SWR threshold of 1.5, and introducing headroom maintenance criteria. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Vehicles produced in more than one stage and altered vehicles were not required to meet the upgraded requirements until September 1, 2016. </FTNT> With the full implementation of FMVSS No. 216a completed, FMVSS No. 216 is no longer applicable. We propose to eliminate FMVSS No. 216 in its entirety and amend FMVSS No. 216a to clarify its applicability. This action does not affect the applicability of 49 U.S.C. 30122, which prohibits certain entities from making inoperative any part of a device or element of design installed in vehicle pursuant to an FMVSS applicable on the date of manufacture. <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 49 U.S.C. 322, 30111, 30115, 30117, 30166; delegation of authority at 49 CFR 1.95. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Analyses</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Rule Summary</HD> As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rule can be found at <E T="03">regulations.gov,</E> Docket NHTSA-2025-0039, in the <E T="02">SUMMARY</E> section of this proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</HD> As with the rule proposed for rescission, this rule does not meet the criteria of a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Orders 14215 and 13563. Therefore, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not reviewed this rule under those orders. This regulation is not an E.O. 14192 regulatory action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation</HD> The policy statement in section 1 of Executive Order 13609 provides that the regulatory approaches taken by foreign governments may differ from those taken by the United States to address similar issues, and that in some cases the differences between them might not be necessary and might impair the ability of American businesses to export and compete internationally. It further recognizes that in meeting shared challenges involving health, safety, and other issues, international regulatory cooperation can identify approaches that are at least as protective as those that are or would be adopted in the absence of such cooperation and can reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements. In addition, section 24211 of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, Global Harmonization, provides that DOT “shall cooperate, to the maximum extent practicable, with foreign governments, nongovernmental stakeholder groups, the motor vehicle industry, and consumer groups with respect to global harmonization of vehicle regulations as a means for improving motor vehicle safety.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  H.R. 3684 (117th Congress) (2021). </FTNT> Because the proposed changes are deleting obsolete regulatory text, they do not implicate any issues regarding international regulatory cooperation. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Initial Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601-612) (as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) of 1996; 5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), agencies must prepare and make available for public comment a regulatory flexibility analysis that describes the effect of the rule on small entities ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> small businesses, small organizations, and small government jurisdictions). No regulatory flexibility analysis is required, however, if the head of an agency or an appropriate designee certifies that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. NHTSA has concluded and hereby certifies that this rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities; therefore, an analysis is not included. This proposed recission rule will remove FMVSS No. 216 which is no longer applicable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Unfunded Mandates Reform Act</HD> This proposed rule does not contain Federal mandates (under the regulatory provisions of Title II of the UMRA) for State, local and Tribal governments, or the private sector of $100 million or more in any one year. Thus, the rule is not subject to the requirements of sections 202 and 205 of the UMRA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 13175</HD> Executive Order 13175 requires Federal agencies to consult and coordinate with Tribes on a government-to-government basis on policies that have Tribal implications, including regulations, legislative comments or proposed legislation, and other policy statements or actions that have s ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━