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June 16, 2006
VOLVO BETTER ROOF DOCS CAUSE CONSTERNATION AT NHTSA
A consumer advocate who has criticized NHTSAs current proposal to amend its FMVSS 214 roof crush standard as being far too weak, has provided the agency with a volume of Volvo materials produced in product liability court cases. In the materials, Volvo engineers describe in detail the feasibility of roof strength considerably higher than what NHTSA is proposing to require. But NHTSA seems unwilling to make the documents public in the docket of its FMVSS 214 rulemaking. The issue is critical to the injury-prevention performance of SUVs and other light-truck vehicles in rollovers. (See earlier Current Development archived items for background on the rulemaking controversy.)
In a letter to the agency, Paula Lawlor has described in detail the agencys actions to redact or otherwise censor material she has submitted to the roof crush rulemaking docket, and has attached a letter from attorneys for Ford Motor Company, which now owns Volvo, alleging that she has used the Volvo documents in a manner not authorized be existing court protective orders and threatening legal action if you continue to do so. Ford has separately told the agency that it believes the proposed roof crush standard is unreasonably strong.
Lawlor has made a number of submissions to NHTSA in the docket. These can be viewed by using the DOT docket form at http://dms.dot.gov/search/searchFormAdvanced.cfm. In the drop-down box for agency click on NHTSA. For calendar year choose 2005. For docket subject enter roof crush. Leave all other entries blank and click on Search. When the document list appears click on reverse order at the top. On the list of submissions that then appears, scroll down to find and open documents submitted in recent months by Paula Lawlor.
Posted by MVHAP at June 16, 2006 12:26 PM