Highway bill tasks NHTSA with new auto, tire regulations

Jan. 20, 2016
The Highway funding bill the Congress passed in December contains a number of amendments affecting vehicle safety, some of them with aftermarket implications. Provisions focusing on recalls, rental car safety, whistleblowing, tire registration and other aspects will likely affect the aftermarket.

The Highway funding bill the Congress passed in early December contains a number of amendments affecting vehicle safety, some of them with aftermarket implications. The bill (H.R. 22) is nearly 1,300 pages, but only 40 of those deal with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) programs.

But provisions focusing on recalls, rental car safety, whistleblowing, tire registration and other aspects will likely affect retailers, service stations, distributors, parts suppliers and others in the supply chain. Of course, many of the provisions affect OEM manufacturers, too.

The first thing to note is what is not in the bill. A draft bill that had circulated in the House Energy & Commerce Committee had included language that would have made it “unlawful for any person to access, without authorization, an electronic control unit (ECU) or critical system of a motor vehicle, or other system containing driving data for such motor vehicle, either wirelessly or through a wired connection.” The Auto Care Association had raised objections to that language. It was not included in the highway bill.

Otherwise, the bill's NHTSA amendments include a number of provisions that originated as separate bills, some of which have been mentioned before in this column. Tires receive a lot of attention. Probably the most significant provision is one the Tire Industry Association, the retailers group, has opposed. The bill attempts to remedy a barrier to tire recalls by requiring independent distributors not owned by a tire manufacturer to record the name and address of all buyers of tires, information about the tire purchased and anything else the NHTSA decides is relevant. Then the tire dealer has to transmit that information electronically and securely to the tire manufacturer or a third-party designated by the manufacturer. The tire dealer cannot add this information transmission cost to the cost of the tires.

The Tire Industry Association wanted Congress to require tire manufacturers to attach radio frequency identification (RFID) tags or some other electronic ID technology to tires so the recall process could be automated, a reform also supported by some safety groups. Roy Littlefield, executive vice president of the TIA, is counting on a study on electronic identification of tires required by the highway bill to serve as future leverage on Congress to undo the dealer notification provision. The highway bill does not specify a deadline for NHTSA to publish that notification rule. So Littlefield said he is hopeful the rule won't take effect any time soon.

The other two tire provisions are directed at manufacturers. One requires NHTSA to publish a rule within two years that makes it impossible for tire monitoring systems installed in new vehicles to be overridden, reset or recalibrated. A second tire provision empowers the DOT in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy to set minimum performance standards for tire fuel efficiency. These will be paired with standards for wet traction to ensure that passenger tire wet traction capability is not reduced to achieve improved tire fuel efficiency.

The heaviest weight of the NHTSA provisions fall on the agency's recall program, which, to put it mildly, has received much criticism in the wake of the GM ignition switch and Toyota sticking accelerator pedal recalls. The bill requires NHTSA to improve its collection of data on vehicle safety problems and recall completion rates, and prescribes an audit by the DOT inspector general to determine whether manufacturers are providing "safe" remedies to customers at no cost.

The recall improvement provisions extend to rental car companies. The provision here forbids rental car companies with fleets of more than 35 cars to rent a recalled vehicle 24 hours after they have been notified of the recall, unless, of course they have done the necessary repairs, which are often farmed out by the rental companies. There is an asterisk on this provision, however. If a particular repair for the rental car is not immediately available, and the manufacturer specifies actions to temporarily alter the vehicle that eliminate the safety risk, the rental company, if it makes that temporary fix, can rent the car, but cannot sell or lease it.

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