ID: nht71-2.23

DATE: 04/01/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Lawrence R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: American Safety Belt Council, Inc.

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letter of November 25, 1970, concerning Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 213, which was amended on September 23, 1970 (35 F.R. 14778), and Docket No. 2-15, Notice 5, which was published on the same day. In your letter you state that while S4.4 of Standard No. 213 presumes the continued availability of factory-installed seat belt assemblies, recent proposals on passive restraint systems say result in the reasonsibility for the installation of seat belts passing from the automobile manufacturer to the buyer of children's seats. You are apparently concerned that should this occur, there is insufficient guidance presently available to the customer on having installed in his vehicle a seat belt assembly for use with a child seat. While the Administration does not as a general rule comment on docket submissions, we believe you have raised an important issue, one for which a response is appropriate.

Under the recent amendment to the occupant crash protection standard, which was published March 10, 1971 (36 F.R. 4600), manufacturers will have the option of using seat belt assemblies to meet restraint requirements until August 1975. At present, we anticipate that most manufacturers will in fact continue to use seat belt assemblies until that time. Consequently, we do not believe modification of Standard No. 213, which you suggest in your letter, is presently necessary. Furthermore, there are other motor vehicle safety standards, which we intend to retain, that would eliminate much of the problem with which you are concerned. Thus, while seat belt assemblies would no longer be required as standard equipment, passenger cars would still be required pursuant to the provisions of Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 210, to be manufactured with seat belt assembly anchorages that provides a location designed specifically for the attachment of seat belt assemblies and that

can be used by a consumer in the installation of aftermarket seat belts. Moreover, Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 209, "Seat Belt Assemblies," as you know, requires each aftermarket seat belt assembly to contain attachment hardware and instructions for installing the assembly in the vehicle. These requirements together provide consumers with sufficient information and materials for them to have seat belts properly installed for use with a child seating system. If problems do arise in the future that these requirements do not fully deal with, appropriate steps will be taken at that time.

Thank you for your continued interest in motor vehicle safety.

ID: nht71-2.24

DATE: 04/01/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; R. A. Diaz; NHTSA

TO: Good Rumor Corporation

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: In your letter of March 2 you petitioned for an amendment of S4.5.6 of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 10 which would eliminate the requirement for an outage indicator on vehicles less than 80 inches in overall width equipped with variable-load turn signal flashers.

The Administration has determined that vehicles less than 80 inches in overall width should be provided with a turnsignal outage indication. As a general rule, these vehicles are not subject to the inspections and maintenance that larger vehicles are, and a malfunctioning turn-signal unit is less likely to be discovered in the absence of an outage indication to the driver. Your petition for rulemaking is therefore denied.

The Federal motor vehicle safety standards, however, do not prohibit the use of variable-load flashers as replacement equipment for fixed-load flashers.

ID: nht71-2.25

DATE: 04/13/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Lawrence R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Tire Retreading Institute

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in response to your letter of December 28, 1970, to Roger Comptom, requesting an interpretation whether the Tire Identification and Record Keeping Regulation (49 CFR 574) is applicable to retreaded tires sold to the General Services Administration (GSA); and, if the regulation is applicable, what will GSA be considered to be; a distributor, a dealer, or a first purchaser for purposes other than resale.

The regulation is applicable to both new and retread tires sold to GSA. We consider GSA to be a "purchaser" under the regulation, and the manufacturer or retreader is required to maintain records of the purchaser's name and address and the identification number of the tires sold to them. However, as you must realize, individual arrangements on a contractual basis between GSA and its suppliers are not precluded by the regulation.

ID: nht71-2.26

DATE: 04/13/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Lawrence R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Toyo Kogyo Co. Ltd.

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in response to your letter of March 16, 1971, requesting interpretations of several provisions of the Defect Report Regulations, 49 CFR Part 573.

You ask whether a quarterly report containing the information specified by section 573.5(b) concerning quarterly motor vehicle production must be submitted for calendar quarters during which no defect notification campaign is conducted. This interpretation is correct. A quarterly report containing the production figures and such other information as may be required by section 573.5 must be submitted for each calendar quarter.

You ask whether the first quarterly report required to be submitted pursuant to section 573.5 need cover only the period from August 16, 1971 (the effective date of the regulation) to September 30, 1971. This interpretation is correct.

Finally, you ask whether the term "submit", as used in sections 573.4(b) and 573.5(a), means "send". This interpretation is generally correct. The requirements in these sections for the submission of the defect information and quarterly reports would be satisfied by mailing the reports so that they are postmarked within the specified period of time. For example, defect information reports that are mailed to NHTSA must be postmarked not more than 5 working days after a defect in a vehicle has been determined to be safety-related. However, hand-delivered defect information reports must be received by NHTSA not more than 5 working days after such determination.

ID: nht71-2.27

DATE: 04/13/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Lawrence R. Schenider; NHTSA

TO: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letters of February 9 and February 17, 1971, requesting a clarification of the applicability of Part 574, the Tire Identification and Record Keeping regulation, to changeover tires.

In your letters you suggest that, for purposes of Part 574, changeover tires should be considered as used tires, because (1) as a legal matter title to both the vehicle and the tires passes to the purchaser of the vehicle at the time of purchase; (2) tire dealers generally accept changeover tires with less than 100 miles of use as trade-in tires; (3) changeover tires are considered to be used tires by the Federal Trade Commission; and (4) in most cases the tire manufacturer will not have direct contact with the tire dealer selling the changeover tires after they have been traded in by the vehicle purchaser.

We have carefully considered these points, and have determined that Part 574 is nevertheless applicable to changeover tires.

Part 574 is an integral part of the enforcement scheme for compliance with the standards and the requirements with respect to safety-related defects, and as such its coverage is intended to be coextensive with the applicability of the standards. Section 108(a) of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act prohibits the manufacture for sale, sale, or offering for sale of tires which do not conform to applicable standards. Although the Act provides that this prohibition shall not apply after the first purchase, it specifically limits this exemption to purchases made "in good faith for purposes other than resale." Therefore, the fact that title to original-equipment tires has passed to the vehicle purchaser is not controlling, because in these cases the purchaser intends to exchange the tires-- that is, he is purchasing them for the purpose of reselling them, not for using them.

If the standard were not applicable to changeover tires, tire dealers could with impunity alter these tires in a manner that would make them unsafe. A case in point is the known practice whereby dealers alter the sidewalls of tires, often changeover tires, by cutting out a groove and laminating a whitewall surface to the surface of the tire.

Another policy reason for applying Part 574 to changeover tires is that, from a safety standpoint, the person who actually is using the changeover tires on his vehicle should be the one who is notified in the event the tires are suspected of being defective.

We recognize that the Federal Trade Commission does not allow changeover tires to be sold as new tires. That agency is, however, primarily concerned with fraudulent sales, an area of concern much different from ours. The difference in the definitional categories used by the two agencies is, we feel, fully justified by their different missions.

With regard to your point that the manufacturer of the changeover tires would not have direct contact with the dealer who sells the changeover tires, I will simply say that this is true in many situations with regard to tire distribution, and we do not consider it sufficient grounds to make the regulation inapplicable to changeover tires. It does not appear to be an undue hardship for a tire dealer to obtain a form and forward the information concerning the purchaser of the tire to the tire manufacturer.

ID: nht71-2.28

DATE: 04/20/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Lawrence R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Allied Chemical Corporation

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letter of March 24, 1971, requesting our interpretation of S4.5.2 of Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208. You have asked whether the requirement of S4.5.2 that "all electrical circuits" must be monitored would mean that a bridgewire circuit in an electroexplosive device would have to be monitored. Our answer is that such a circuit must be monitored, although it should be noted that monitoring need not be continous, but may be designed to occur, for example, only when the ignition is in the "start" position.

Your letter points out several potential problems with the inclusion of such a bridgewire circuit among the monitored systems. We are giving consideration to the self-monitoring requirement in the light of the comments we have received, with a view to possible amendments that may be found advisable.

ID: nht71-2.29

DATE: 04/20/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; L. R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Morgan Motor Company

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letter of March 17, 1971, in which you requested further clarification of the test procedures of the standard on side door strength, Standard No. 214. Your diagram of the Morgan Plus 8 shows a horizontal line drawn across the door 5 inches above the lowest point of the door. This would appear to be an accurate depiction of the location of the lower edge of the loading device as specified in the standard. You express concern that the line is a considerable distance from the ground, but under the requirements of the standard, the height above the lower edge of the door is the relevant height, and not the height above ground.

I hope this will help to resolve your questions with respect to Standard No. 214.

ID: nht71-2.3

DATE: 02/10/71

FROM: R.A. DIAZ -- NHTSA; SIGNATURE BY CLUE D. FERGUSON

TO: The Yokohama Rubber Company Inc.

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This will acknowledge your letter of December 30, 1970, requesting exemption from the requirements of Section 374,4, concerning the location of the required labeling between the maximum section width and the based, of Regulation Fact 374. Tire Identification and Recordkeeping. Your request is being(Illegible Word) as a petition for rulemaking under @ 353.551 of title 42 and by way of this letter is denied.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrative is requiring the location of the identification number because the maximum sections width and the based for two reasons. As you have currently cited the location is such as this labeling will not be remove in the retreading(Illegible Words). The second reason is that such a location will provide the maximum protection to(Illegible Word) that the number is not scuffed or(Illegible Word) off during the operation. In view of these reasons, you are not allowed to put the identification number in the space above the regular section width.

Your question concerning the height of the "DOT" for motorcycle tires is not applicable at this time. The symbol "DOT" cannot be used as motorcycle tires until there is an applicable standard. The(Illegible Word) for the standard covering these tires will be issued later this calender year and probably will not be effective until January 1, 1972.

ID: nht71-2.30

DATE: 04/23/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Robert L. Carter; NHTSA

TO: J.O. Phillips

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: In your letter of March 31 you ask what requirements may apply to you if you rebuild truck tractors from salvage units.

To begin with, you become a "manufacturer" under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, and subject to the requirements which the Act imposes upon manufacturers. These requirements are that you ensure that any motor vehicle you manufacture complies with all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standards, that you cooperate with safety-related investigations by providing information and access to your premises upon request by this agency, that you furnish certification to distributers(Illegible Word) of your motor vehicles that the vehicles comply with applicable general standards, standards, and that you furnish notification to vehicle owners of any safety-related defects in the vehicle when they come to your attention. At present, regulations requiring that prospective purchasers be supplied with certain safety-related performance information do not apply to manufacturers of truck tractors.

Under our regulations a "truck tractor" is a sub-category of "truck," and therefore it must comply with Federal standards applicable to trucks, as well as requirements that specifically apply to truck tractors.(Illegible Word) standards, however, do not apply to vehicles in use, that is, to a vehicle which is merely repaired. A vehicle which is rebuilt, however, so that it becomes in(Illegible Word) motor vehicle must. In our view, comply with all Federal Standards applicable to the manufacturer of new vehicles.

You informed Mr. Vinaon of our Office of Chief Counsel on April 19 that, in a typical operation, you would assemble a truck tractor using both parts from one or more existing truck tractors and new parts contained in a "Glider" kit such as is held by(Illegible Words), and that the resulting truck tractor would be eligible for registration as a new motor vehicle. In our opinion, truck tractors which you produce in this manner must comply with all Federal standards applicable to trucks or truck tractors as of the date of their manufacture.

I enclose a copy of the Act and "Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Other Regulations" for your guidance.

Enclosures

ID: nht71-2.31

DATE: 04/28/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; L. R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Toyota Motor Company, Ltd.

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is to conform your understanding that the DOT symbol, which represents the tire manufacturer's certification that the tire complies with the passenger car tire standard, is required on tires installed on multipurpose passenger vehicles, if such tires are originally designed and have passenger car tire size designations. However, since Standard No. 110 does not, at the present time, apply to multipurpose passenger vehicles, the responsibility for assuring that these tires contain the DOT symbol is limited to the tire manufacturer.