Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

This document responds in part to petitions for reconsideration of our statutorily-mandated rulemaking establishing a new Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) requiring installation in new light vehicles of a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) capable of detecting when one or more of a vehicle's tires is significantly under-inflated. We established the standard in a final rule published in April 2005. We responded to petitions for reconsideration of that final rule in a final rule published in September 2005. This final rule responds to the petition for reconsideration of our September 2005 final rule submitted by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which raised a number of technical issues pertaining to the combined low tire pressure/TPMS malfunction indicator lamp. (The agency will respond subsequently in a separate notice to a second petition for reconsideration submitted by ETV Corporation Pty Limited.) We are granting the Alliance's petition, and through this document, we are amending the standard accordingly. We anticipate that today's amendments, which are of a minor technical nature, will not necessitate redesign of current TPMSs nor appreciably change the costs of compliance with the safety standard.