Interpretation ID: aiam4194
Manager
Regulatory Affairs
Volvo Cars of North America
Rockleigh
NJ 07647;
Dear Mr. Shapiro: This responds to your letter concerning a newly designed Volvo chil safety seat. You stated that this child safety seat can be certified as complying with Standard No. 213, *Child Restraint Systems* (49 CFR S 571.213), when secured only by a vehicle lap belt, in the rearward-facing mode for infants and in the forward-facing mode for toddlers. In addition, you indicate that this child safety seat can be used in certain vehicle specific installations in Volvo vehicles, and that the vehicle specific installations 'provide a higher level of protection.' You asked this agency's opinion as to whether this new child safety seat is designed in due care to meet the minimum requirements of Standard No. 213 and whether it can be used in both the universal application that is, secured by only a lap belt and Volvo vehicle-specific modes.; With respect to your first question, the National Traffic and Moto Vehicle Safety Act (15 U.S.C. 1381 *et seq*.) provides no authority under which this agency can assure a manufacturer that its product has been designed in due care to comply with all applicable requirements or to otherwise 'approve' it. The Act establishes a process of self-certification under which a manufacturer is not required to submit a product to the agency for approval before sale, but simply to provide a certification to dealers and distributors that it does meet all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standards. If that product does not in fact comply, the manufacturer must notify and remedy the noncompliance according to the Act, and it is in presumptive violation of it (and therefore subject to civil penalties) unless it can establish that it did not have reason to know in the exercise of due care that the product was noncompliant. The statute thus provides an affirmative defense to the manufacturer, but it is a defense that does not arise until there is a violation of the Act, and the burden is upon the proponent to establish it.; Under the Act a product must comply at the time of sale to its firs purchaser for purposes other than resale. This means that a manufacturer's responsibility to insure compliance does not end at the design stage, but extends through manufacture, distribution, and sale of the product. In this context whether a manufacturer has exercised due care in the design stage can be an irrelevant question if the noncompliance was caused by an error in the manufacturing process which should have been detected and corrected, for example. For these reasons we cannot provide the opinion that you seek.; With respect to your second question, Volvo can recommend its chil seat for use with a lap belt in vehicles other than those manufactured by Volvo and for vehicle- specific uses in Volvo cars. The preamble to the 1979 final rule establishing Standard No. 213 included the following statement: 'As long as child restraints can pass the performance requirements of the standard secured only by a lap belt, a manufacturer is free to specify other 'vehicle specific' installation conditions.' 44 FR 72131, at 72136, December 13, 1979. Therefore, Volvo can provide the vehicle-specific installation conditions for its child safety seat in Volvo automobiles. Please note that section S5.6 of Standard No. 213 requires manufacturers recommending vehicle-specific installations to provide step-by-step instructions for securing the child restraint in those particular vehicles, as well as providing such instructions for securing the child restraint when it is used in vehicles for which no vehicle-specific installation is recommended.; Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions o need more information on this subject.; Sincerely, Erika Z. Jones, Chief Counsel