WASHINGTON D.C. – At least a year past a Congressional deadline and several years behind its own schedule, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed a new ejection-mitigation standard that would compel automakers to improve their side airbag designs to fully cover up to three rows of passengers and – perhaps – install advanced glazing.

The proposal would establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 226 – Ejection Mitigation. The standard would apply to the side windows next to the first three rows of seats in motor vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less. The performance-based standard would institute a compliance test in which an impactor would be propelled from inside a test vehicle toward the windows. The ejection mitigation system would have to prevent the impactor – based on the mass imposed by a 50th percentile male’s upper torso on the window opening – from moving more than a specified distance beyond the plane of the window. Each side window would be impacted at up to four locations around its perimeter at two time intervals following deployment, to ensure that the airbags remain deployed for the beginning and end stages of a rollover.

According to the NPRM, the intention of the test is to:

“mitigate ejections in different types of rollover and side impact crashes involving different occupant kinematics. The test has been designed to represent the dynamic rollover event. The mass of the impactor, 18 kilograms (kg) (40 lb), in combination with the impact speed discussed below, has sufficient kinetic energy to assure that the ejection mitigation countermeasure is able to protect a far-reaching population of people in real world crashes.”

Don Friedman, inventor of the Jordan Rollover System, a repeatable dynamic rollover test, said that the proposal was good – as far as it went.

“It’s not a dynamic test, but it’s consistent with the plans they had laid out,” Friedman said. “And it is consistent with the roof crush standard in that they are proceeding with a simulated static test. It will have useful consequences that will hopefully be supplanted by a dynamic test in the NCAP which will deal with ejection and roof crush issue.”

This rulemaking comes on the heels of the 2007 upgrade to the FMVSS 214 side-impact pole test, which, in effect, mandated the use of side air curtains to prevent head injuries in side impacts. The agency predicts that manufacturers will meet this new proposed performance requirement by making existing side impact air bag curtains larger and able to stay inflated longer. The agency based the test on computer modeling showing that ejections can occur early and late in the rollover event. Under the proposed test, the impactor would strike the targets at two impact speeds and at two different points in time after the side curtain air bag deployed, to ensure that the curtains retain the occupant through all the stages of a rollover.

Under the NPRM, NHTSA could request that manufacturers describe the conditions under which the ejection mitigation air bags will deploy.

“We do not believe conditions need to be specified in the standard dictating when the sensors should deploy; field data indicate that rollover sensors are deploying when they should in the real world,” the agency said.

The ejection mitigation rulemaking was mandated under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, the massive transportation bill of 2005. NHTSA was to have issued a final ejection mitigation rule by September 1, 2009, when SAFETEA-LU’s funding expired. The rulemaking was to be part of a broader initiative to reduce rollover crashes and the associated deaths and injuries.

The agency multi-pronged approach included a new rule mandating electronic stability control to improve rollover crash avoidance and a contentious upgrade to the roof crush standard. SAFETEA-LU’s Section 10301 directed NHTSA to complete a rulemaking to reduce complete and partial ejections. The agency’s early planning documents show that it expected to propose occupant containment performance requirement for side windows by 2006.

NHTSA has been studying advanced glazing as an ejection countermeasure since 1995, when it published “Ejection Mitigation Using Advanced Glazings: A Status Report.” The agency issued a second glazing report in 1999 and the following year published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on anti-ejection glazing. But in 2001, the agency reversed itself. It issued a third report downplaying the benefits of anti-ejection glazing and in 2002 terminated the rulemaking, saying that “advanced glazing appeared to increase the risk of neck injury by producing higher neck shear loads and neck moments than impacts into tempered side glazing.” The agency also turned in high estimates for requiring automakers to install such glazing in front side windows ranging from more than $800 million to over $1.3 billion.

Advanced glazing may rise from the regulatory dead under this proposal. The agency drafted the test procedure to encourage the use of advanced laminated glazing in fixed and in moveable windows in addition to or in lieu of the side curtain air bag. Memphis attorney Patrick Ardis, who has been espousing the advantages of laminated glazing for years and has litigated civil suits that involve ejection, says that automakers should opt to use both, because both are necessary to complete the occupant protection system.

“It’s only about 40 years too late,” says Ardis. “The bottom line is that none of the domestic car manufacturers have had to evaluate the real world performance of side windows or any other fixed windows. All they’ve done is a series of drop tests – tests that go back to the1930s. So far, there’s been this giant disconnect between a 1930s test and horrible performance in the real-world.”

In the agency’s tests, the glazing was pre-broken to simulate the likely condition of glazing in a rollover. Tests of vehicles with advanced glazing resulted in an average 51 mm reduction in impactor displacement across the target locations. In other words, an ejection mitigation window curtain plus advanced glazing resulted in the least displacement of the headform. To encourage manufacturers to enhance ejection mitigation curtains with advanced glazing, the NPRM proposed to allow windows of advanced laminated glazing to be in position, but pre-broken to reproduce the state of glazing in an actual rollover crash.

Attorney Jim Gilbert, who tried the nation’s first windshield pop-out case in the mid-1980s, and a leading specialist in rollover litigation, says that the proposal still constitutes an unnecessary delay. Gilbert’s eventual appellate court victory over an international aftermarket windshield replacement company accused of substandard installation practices led to an industry-wide change. But Gilbert, of the Arvada, Colorado-based Gilbert, Ollanick & Komyatte P.C., hasn’t seen OE manufacturers improve their glazing at all.

“Manufacturers aren’t going to start making improvements unless someone tells them they have to and that some one is either a jury or the government,” Gilbert said.

But he decried the pace of the proposed phase-in, in which manufacturers would be required to have 20 percent of their fleets compliant by September 2014, with full implementation by 2017.

“Twenty percent is already being done,” he said. “Sensors and side curtains have been around since the 1990s. Why aren’t they acknowledging the facts – that this is available. It seems like an unreasonable delay after the decades of delay in the industry.”

The agency is accepting comments on this proposal through January.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—NHTSA’s regulatory dance card is mighty full for the next five months, with a clutch of substantive rulemakings that includes developing a performance standard for full and partial ejection mitigation, restraints on motor coaches, boosters for older children and a rearward visibility standard – nearly all mandated by Congress.

The agency’s official shortlist, published in the Federal Register on July 1, contains several significant areas for immediate rulemaking ranging from occupant protection to regulations that would reduce deaths and injuries to children in and around vehicles. In the future, the agency will turn its attention toward possible rulemakings for crash avoidance technology, such as lane departure warning systems and automatic braking in advance of an impending crash.

Of course, making the list, which covers this year through 2011, doesn’t mean NHTSA will actually make it happen, but we’ve summarized the highlights below:

Rules for Children

Of the rulemakings regarding children, three were required by the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2007. This measure, adopted after five years of intense lobbying, compels NHTSA to develop a rearward visibility standard, mandate a brake-to-shift-interlock and require power windows to have an automatic reverse feature. The bill was named after 2-year-old Cameron Gulbransen, who was killed when his father, a pediatrician from Long Island, inadvertently backed over him, because the blindzone behind his SUV made the toddler impossible to see.

In March, NHTSA published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on establishing a rearward view standard in March. It did not outline a possible performance standard, but presented the research it had done to date and sought answers to 52 different questions in seven different areas, including the scope of the problem, technologies for improving rear visibility, effectiveness, driver behavior, options for measuring rear visibility and countermeasure performance. It expects to publish an NPRM this year, with a Final Rule in 2011.

NHTSA also expects to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to consider requiring power windows to automatically reverse direction when, upon closing, the window detects an obstruction, to prevent children and others from being trapped, injured, or killed. Under the language of the law, the agency would have 18 months to initiate the process and 30 months to establish the standard. But, the provision allows the Secretary of Transportation to decline to make a rule requiring the feature, if the secretary determines “that no additional safety standards are reasonable, practicable, and appropriate.”

The brake to shift interlock (BTSI) is a safer regulatory bet. In 2006, the major automakers who comprise the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, Inc. attempted to head off legislation by announcing that its members had voluntarily committed to installing brake-to-shift interlocks by 2010. Safety advocates, however, were disturbed by the loopholes in the agreement. For one, manufacturers with new entries into the market, from China for example, would have no obligation to include a BTSI. Further, the agreement did not require the brake-to-shift interlock to work regardless of the key position, meaning that the BTSI might not work when the key is in the accessory position. Finally, advocates criticized the agreement because consumers wouldn’t know which vehicles did not have a BTSI. An NPRM is slated to be published this year.

The fourth rulemaking that could improve automotive safety for children is a scheduled Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to add requirements to FMVSS 213 Child Restraint Systems for booster seats for older children, and add a 10-year-old crash test dummy to the regulation. The agency has been working on this for four years. The most recent rulemaking was in January 2008, when NHTSA published an SNPRM that proposed seating procedures for positioning the Hybrid III 10-year-old child dummy and the HIII 6-year-old child dummy in booster seats when the dummies are used in the FMVSS 213 compliance tests.

Safety for the Rest of Us

The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) Act required the agency to publish a final rule establishing performance standards to reduce complete and partial ejections of vehicle occupants from outboard seating positions by October 1, 2009. The first phase of the agency’s effort was amending FMVSS 214 Side Impact in September 2007, to include a side-impact pole test. This rule had the effect of requiring side air curtains, at least for front seat passengers. According to an earlier plan, the second phase is to establish occupant containment performance requirements, which included the development of a test methodology to evaluate the performance of ejection mitigation systems, including side curtain airbags and improved glazing. The third phase is to establish performance requirements for rollover sensors, to ensure that the air bags will deploy in a rollover crash. The agency describes the rule thus: “This proposed standard would reduce the partial and total ejection of vehicle occupants through side windows in crashes, particularly rollover crashes.” There were few hints on how that would be accomplished.

After decades of buying the Motor Coach industry’s rap at retail, the agency is about to get serious about motor coach safety. Bus manufacturers have fended off regulations for decades, arguing that occupants were adequately protected from crash forces by compartmentalization – the space around them enclosed by the seat backs behind and in front of them and the side structure. The compartment, however, was open on three sides. The large picture windows tended to fail in a crash, leading to fatal ejections. In rollovers, occupants and their possessions are tossed right out of their compartments and sustain injuries from contact with the roof and other occupants. Performance standards for motor coaches in various crashes has been on the National Transportation Safety Board’s list for at least 11 years, but the agency has shown little interest beyond gathering the players for conferences in which industry representatives defended the status quo. At one such event, in 2002, then-Associate Administrator for Safety Standards Stephen Kratzke assured the industry that the agency wouldn’t promulgate any regulations – “just to do something.” Proposals would be based on “solid data,” he promised.

In the Future, We Just Won’t Crash

Looking ahead, NHTSA sees crash avoidance as the next frontier. It intends to focus its research on developing performance criteria and tests for systems that automatically apply the brakes when the vehicle senses an impending crash, lane departure warning systems and vehicle to vehicle communications systems. The pre-crash warning and brake assist technology is already offered on some Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Toyota and Ford vehicles. These systems use radar sensors to monitor the traffic in front of the vehicle, and if the distance between the vehicle and the one in front of it is too small, the driver receives a warning and the brakes may be primed for maximum power, or automatically applied. Other systems tighten the seat belts and activate the airbags, as well.

NHTSA has already developed a performance test for New Car Assessment Program that will debut for the 2011 model year. The agency expects to decide if it will require automatic crash-imminent braking.

Similarly, the agency plans to establish performance criteria and tests for lane departure warning systems, which have also debuted on Toyota, GM, Nissan, Honda and Mercedes vehicles. Again, NHTSA has already developed a performance test for the NCAP to apply to the 2011 model year. The next agency decision, scheduled for 2011, will be whether to require them.

Further into the future, NTSA is contemplating a technologically advanced automotive environment, in which vehicles communicate with one another to avoid collisions. Some prototype vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems send out speed, GPS location and braking information for crash avoidance, speed management, intersection collision avoidance and traffic congestion. These systems are in development among the major manufacturers. Vehicle-to-vehicle systems only work if a critical mass of the fleet is so-equipped. Last year, the European Union laid the groundwork of a widespread vehicle-to-vehicle communications landscape by reserving an EU-wide frequency band for automotive use. NHTSA forecasts that its next agency decision will be in 2013.