Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Occupant Crash Protection

This final rule makes technical amendments to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, Occupant Crash Protection. Specifically, this document updates references to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) (formerly the Research and Special Programs Administration) regulations that are included in the requirements for pressure vessels and explosive devices used in occupant crash protection systems, such as air bags. As a result of various rulemakings that reorganized the relevant regulations, the references contained in FMVSS No. 208 are out of date. This final rule updates the references to the PHMSA regulations. This document also makes a correction to the air bag warning label requirements for vehicle dashboards and steering wheel hubs to make clear that the general warning label requirements for vehicles with air bags are superseded by different, specific requirements if the vehicle is certified to meet certain advanced air bag requirements. As written now, the general warning label requirements contain an explicit exception for the warning label requirements for vehicles certified to meet these advanced air bag requirements before December 1, 2003, but do not reference the warning label requirements for vehicles certified to meet these requirements on or after December 1, 2003. This document does not make any substantive changes to the requirements specified in FMVSS No. 208.