Rulemaking Procedures

This final rule reaffirms the agency's policy of focusing its international harmonization activities on identifying and adopting those foreign vehicle safety standards that clearly reflect best practices, i.e., that require significantly higher levels of safety performance than the counterpart U.S. standards. This final rule also announces the agency's policy regarding those instances in which the agency's comparison of standards indicates that the safety performance required by a foreign standard is not significantly higher, but is still better than or at least as good as that required by the counterpart U.S. standard. To aid in implementing these policies, this final rule amends the agency's regulation concerning rulemaking procedures to set forth the process that the agency will use in comparing U.S. and foreign vehicle safety standards and in determining what rulemaking response, if any, is appropriate. The agency will assess whether the safety performance of vehicles or equipment manufactured under the foreign standard is better than or at least functionally equivalent to that of vehicles or equipment manufactured under the U.S. standard, i.e., whether the vehicles or equipment manufactured under the foreign standard produce more or at least as many safety benefits as those produced by the vehicles or equipment manufactured under the U.S. standard. This final rule also emphasizes that the agency's policy is to deny any rulemaking petition seeking to have a foreign standard added to its counterpart U.S. standard as a compliance alternative or to harmonize the U.S. standard with the foreign standard if the petition does not contain an analysis of the relative benefits of the two standards. This policy is necessary to minimize the impact that NHTSA's consideration of such rulemaking petitions might otherwise have on the agency's use of its resources to upgrade its safety standards.