Interpretation ID: nht75-5.13

DATE: 06/26/75

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Robert L. Carter; NHTSA

TO: Humanoid Systems

TITLE: FMVSR INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in response to your letter of May 30, 1975, to the Administrator.

Thank you for the offer to assist in the establishment of new specifications for dummy skin and flesh components. Any procurement of such services would be awarded by competitive procurement, and I hope your company will participate in any such competition when solicited.

The NHTSA issued Part 572, in the form of a large number of dummy design and material specifications supplemented by some calibrating component tests, in order to specify the vehicle performance requirements of certain crash-tent standards, such as standard No. 203, as precisely and objectively as possible. Dummies are not regulated items and not ends in themselves: as @ 572.3 states, the dummy specification "does not in itself impose duties or liabilities on any person." Thus, the dummy specification serves only as a means of informing the vehicle manufacturers how their vehicles must perform if and when tested by the government. There is no regulatory requirement either for "certification" of dummies or their "verification by an independent agency" or anyone else. It may be assumed that government testing will be carried out with dummies that conform to Part 572 as closely as possible. Vehicle manufacturers can ascertain that their vehicles will pass government tests by any means they choose. With this in view, it should be clear that any deviations from the Part 572 specifications are purely a matter of private negotiation and decision making between the dummy manufacturers and their customers, and no governmental "approvals" are possible or appropriate.

Any changes in Part 572 will of course be done through notice and opportunity for comment, and we expect and hope for your full participation in an administrative proceeding when it takes place.

SINCERELY,

June 27, 1975

James B. Gregory Administrator National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

This is to advise you that we have today sent to a Committee of the United States Senate various details concerning your policies as they affect our company.

We have discussed our situation with a number of prominent auto manufacturers which are coming to our support because they do not want to be confronted by a dummy industry in which we are not represented. They have given us considerable data to show that there are many precedents under which NHTSA has altered its rules to avoid giving unfair competitive advantage to any company or submitting another company to unfair competitive disadvantages. We have submitted the data which they have given us to our legal counsel with a view toward possibly taking legal action against your Agency.

I want to ask you to spare both parties the expense and the time involved in such an action by considering again the bald facts of this matter.

I alerted NHTSA in 1973 about the dangers inherent in the use of Nitrosan and was brushed off. In January, 1975, I notified NHTSA that the Dupont plant producing this material had exploded and would not resume its manufacture nor license its technology to any other company because of the numerous explosions which had occurred in the plants of Nitrosan users.

The response of NHTSA was to offer some suggestions for a substitute material and to inquire of the three dummy manufacturers as to their supplies of Nitrosan. Your own records disclose that ARL has a one-year supply, Sierra has enough material for 3 or 4 dummies, and we will exhause our own supply in 3 weeks. This spells creation of a dummy monopoly for ARL by NHTSA's failure to prepare a timely remedy.

In our own report to the Senate Committee, we have discussed the existence of two drawings of the dummy head, both stamped "NHTSA Release". Both drawings cannot be satisified in the same head. We have received no response to our several letters on the subject, dating back to two years ago, but we did receive information from other sources as to which drawing to follow. When I queried your people 2 or 3 months ago as to the status of these two drawings, I was told to "forget the GM drawing". This is to us a baseline as to your respect for "statutory" procedures.

In Part 572, we are dealing with a standard that is not a standard at all. There is little or no control of dummy kinematics, either by performance tests or by specification of some of the most critical determinants of such responses. We are dealing with a dummy where the neck cannot be assembled to the thorax if drawings are followed literally, where the drawings of 2 of the 6 ribs are indeterminate, where the pelvis cannot satisfy the molded weight requirement and the assembled weight requirement simultaneously, where the adbominal sac cannot both be molded to specification and pass your performance tests, and which generally can best be described as a mess. This is the background against which the legolisms of your agency should be weighed.

I have been told by Jim Hofferberth, that the only way we can use a substitute for Nitrosan is by the complete rule-making process which cannot possibly be carried through in less than 6 months, by which time our company will have been forced out of business. When viewed against the time frame, the disposition of the head matter, and the status of the Part 572 specifications, the treatment of this problem is patently unreasonable.

I spoke at length yesterday with Dick Dyson in your Legal Counsel's Office, and I was told that I was making a fuss about nothing, that the Part 572 had no legal standing any more, and that our inability to certify that we met the Part 572 requirements would have nothing to do with our sales of the dummy. I checked this out with the "Big 3" and found Dyson's remarks to be totally unfounded.

No one will buy our dummies if we cannot certify them, and we cannot certify them if the specifications call for a material which exists currently only in the plant of our competitor. If the situation were not so serious for our company, it would be an absurd comedy.

May we request that in the coming week you clear this matter up and permit us to continue to manufacture dummies, which, on balance, we know that we do better than anybody else.

HUMANOID SYSTEMS

Samuel W. Alderson

President