Interpretation ID: nht71-5.60

DATE: 09/14/71

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; L. R. Schneider; NHTSA

TO: Cabot Corporation

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letters of March 10 and July 1, 1971, requesting an exemption from Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 117 for experimental tires that you manufacture by buffing off the tread of new tires and then recapping the tires with different compounds. You state that you use these tires for testing carbon blacks by testing the tires on the public highways and on private test tracks.

We do not consider tires manufactured by the method you describe to be retreaded tires within the scope of Standard No. 117 because they are not manufactured from used tires. However, we do consider them to be new pneumatic tires, and subject to the requirements of Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 109. We regret that an earlier letter to you of April 7, 1971, may have been misleading in that regard.

Section 108(a)(1) of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (15 U.S.C. @ 1397(a)(1)) provides that no person shall --

"manufacture for sale, sell, offer for sale, or introduce or deliver for introduction in interstate commerce . . . any motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment manufactured on or after the date any applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standard takes effect . . . unless it is in conformity with such standard."

We consider the testing of these tires on the public roads to be an introduction of them in interstate commerce, and prohibited by section 108(a)(1) unless the tires conform to Standard No. 109. The tires need not be manufactured for sale to the general public

in order for violations of section 108(a)(1) to occur. However, if the testing of these tires is confined to the laboratory or to private roads, the prohibition of the section 108(a)(1) will not apply to them.

A copy of the Act and Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 109 is enclosed for your information.

Enclosures