Event Data Recorders

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Parts 563 and 585</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2025-0050]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Event Data Recorders</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 (NPRM); response to petitions for reconsideration. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA published a final rule on December 18, 2024, in response to a mandate of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) to establish the appropriate recording period in NHTSA's Event Data Recorder (EDR) regulation (49 CFR part 563). The final rule amended the pre-crash data capture requirements of EDRs by increasing the recording duration and sample rate from 5 seconds at 2 Hz to 20 seconds at 10 Hz. The agency received three petitions for reconsideration from the Alliance of Automotive Innovation, the EDR Committee of SAE International, and FCA US LLC (a subsidiary of Stellantis N.V.) in response to the final rule. NHTSA is proposing to delay the compliance date from September 1, 2027, to September 1, 2028, and implement a phase-in period for EDRs to meet the new requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by December 29, 2025. In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, NHTSA is also seeking comment on a reinstatement with modification to a previously approved information collection. For additional information, see the Paperwork Reduction Act section under the Rulemaking Analyses and Notices section below. All comments relating to the information collection requirements should be submitted to NHTSA and to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the address listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section on or before December 29, 2025. <E T="03">Proposed Compliance Dates:</E> NHTSA proposes delaying the compliance date and adopting a 4-year phase-in period to comply with the requirements in 49 CFR part 563 as amended by the final rule published on December 18, 2024, final rule, “Event Data Recorders.” The proposal would require that 25 percent of a manufacturer's applicable vehicles produced from September 1, 2028, to August 31, 2029, comply with Part 563, followed by 50 percent from September 1, 2029, to August 31, 2030, 75 percent from September 1, 2030, to August 31, 2031, and 100 percent on and after September 1, 2031. NHTSA also proposes that vehicles manufactured in two or more stages or that are altered are not required to comply with the rule until on or after September 1, 2031. Small-volume and limited-line manufacturers would be required to comply beginning on September 1, 2032. The proposal would permit voluntary early compliance. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments to the docket number identified in the heading of this document by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility, M-30, U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building, Ground Floor, Rm. W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> West Building, Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call 202-366-9332 before coming. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-493-2251. Regardless of how you submit your comments, please mention the docket number of this document. Comments on the proposed information collection requirements should be submitted to: 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. It is requested that comments sent to the OMB also be sent to the NHTSA rulemaking docket identified in the heading of this document. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> 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">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <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> or the street address listed above. Follow the online instructions for accessing the dockets. <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 Joshua McNeil, Office of Crashworthiness Standards ( <E T="03">joshua.mcneil@dot.gov</E> ). For legal issues, you may contact Eli Wachtel, Office of the Chief Counsel ( <E T="03">eli.wachtel@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, 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. Event Data Recorders and Part 563</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Rulemaking Actions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Summary of Petitions for Reconsideration</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Discussion and Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Lead Time and Phase-In Schedule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Cost Estimates</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Basis for December 2024 Final Rule and Benefits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Industry Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. CDR Development</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Rulemaking Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> In this notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), NHTSA responds to petitions for reconsideration of a final rule published December 18, 2024, that amended the data capture requirements of event data recorders (EDRs) to specify a 20-second recording duration and a 10 Hz sample rate. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The primary purpose of an EDR is to record technical information for a brief period before, during, and after a collision, aiding in post-crash analysis and reconstruction. The data recorded by the EDR provides a snapshot of the vehicle dynamics that can aid crash investigators in assessing the performance of specific safety equipment, including air bag deployment strategies, air bag operation, and event severity. This information can also help NHTSA and others identify potential opportunities for safety improvements in current and future vehicles and implement more effective safety regulations. Manufacturers are not required to install EDRs in their vehicles. However, EDRs that are voluntarily installed must meet the requirements NHTSA has established in 49 CFR part 563 (Part 563). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  89 FR 102810 (December 18, 2024). </FTNT> NHTSA received three petitions for reconsideration of the December 2024 final rule from the Alliance of Automotive Innovation (Auto Innovators), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> the EDR Committee of SAE International (SAE), <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> and FCA U.S. LLC (FCA), a subsidiary of Stellantis N.V. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> NHTSA is granting the petitions for reconsideration in part and proposing to adopt the compliance timeline requested by both SAE and Auto Innovators in their respective petitions. This modified timeline would provide manufacturers with an extended lead time and a phase-in to allow them to integrate the necessary EDR and Airbag Control Module (ACM)  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> architecture changes within their current model development cycles without disrupting existing product plans. The agency's proposal balances the need for enhanced crash data, as mandated by the FAST Act, with practical industry constraints to ensure these safety advancements can be implemented effectively across the entire vehicle fleet. However, NHTSA is not proposing to adjust the recording duration and sample rate requirements for EDRs as finalized in the December 2024 final rule. These technical specifications represent enhancements to vehicle crash data collection capabilities that will support more comprehensive crash investigations. NHTSA is deferring a final decision on reconsideration until after review of comments received in response to this NPRM. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  NHTSA-2024-0084-0005. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  NHTSA-2024-0084-0004. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  NHTSA-2024-0084-0003. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Manufacturers have different names for this module including the Airbag Control Unit (ACU), Sensing Diagnostic Module (SDM), Restraints Control Module (RCM), Powertrain Control Module (PCM), Supplemental Restraint System (SRS), and the like. In this document, ACU an ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 110k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━