Interpretation ID: aiam4411
President
Auto Accessories
Inc.
P.O. Box 10044
New Iberia
LA 70561;
Dear Mr. Autery: This responds to your letter to Mr. John Messera, of our Office o Vehicle Safety Compliance, concerning the installation of your company's armrest in certain Volvo models. Specifically, you propose to have dealers remove the part of the front seat belt assembly that contains the buckle for the belt, straighten a metal guide that ensures that the buckle portion of the seat belt assembly will remain accessible to passengers, and discard a spacer washer that is provided with the seat belt assembly. The spacer washer would be replaced by the armrest mounting bracket, which you stated is the same thickness as the spacer washer it would replace. You asked us whether this procedure would be permissible under the law and our regulations. As explained below, any dealers that follow your proposed installation might violate Federal law.; Standard No. 208, *Occupant Crash Protection* (49 CFR S571.208) set forth minimum requirements for occupant protection. Additionally, section S7.2 sets forth an accessibility requirement for safety belt latch mechanisms that reads as follows:; S7.2 *Latch mechanism*. A seat belt assembly installed in a passenge car, except an automatic belt assembly, shall have a latch mechanism --; (a) Whose components are accessible to a seated occupant in both th stowed and operational positions, ...; Section 108(a)(2)(A) of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safet Act, as amended (15 U.S.C 1397(a)(2)(A)) provides that: 'No manufacturer, distributor, dealer or motor vehicle repair business shall knowingly render inoperative, in whole or in part, any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle ... in compliance with an applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standard ...' This statutory prohibition might be violated by any dealer that followed your proposed installation procedures for your armrest.; For example, it may be that Volvo installed the metal guide on it front seat safety belts for the purpose of complying with section S7.2 of Standard No. 208. If this were the case, any dealer that straightened that metal guide, in accordance with your installation instructions, might render inoperative a device (that metal guide) that was installed in the vehicle in compliance with Standard No. 208. In this situation, whether the dealer actually renders inoperative the metal guides by straightening them depends on whether the buckle portion of the seat belt assembly no longer complies with section S7.2 (which requires the buckle to be accessible to the front seat occupant) after the installation.; Section 109 of the Safety Act specifies a civil penalty of up to $100 for each violation of section 108(a)(2)(A), up to a maximum of $800,000 for a related series of violations. We would consider each installation of your armrest by a dealer that renders inoperative the vehicle's compliance with Standard No. 208 to be a separate violation. Accordingly, a dealer might be liable for a civil penalty of $1000 multiplied by the number of vehicles in which the dealer had installed armrests in accordance with your instructions.; Please do not misconstrue this letter as suggesting that this agenc either approves or disapproves the proposed installation instructions for your armrests. The Safety Act does not give NHTSA any authority to approve or endorse any products. Instead, the Safety Act places the initial responsibility for determining whether your proposed installation instructions violate a legal or regulatory requirement on your company. The agency may reexamine your initial determination in the context of an enforcement action.; To comply with your legal obligations, I suggest that you carefull reexamine the proposed installation instructions and compare those instructions with the requirements of Standard No. 208, to determine if installing your armrests in accordance with your installation instructions would result in the vehicle no longer complying with Standard No. 208. If it would do so, you will have to devise some other means of installing your armrests, so that dealers would not be instructed to render inoperative the vehicle's compliance with Standard No. 208. If your proposed installation instructions do not result in a rendering inoperative of the vehicle's compliance with Standard No. 208, dealers can follow those instructions without violating any provisions of the law.; Sincerely, Erika Z. Jones, Chief Counsel