Jan 11, 2013
Dear Mr. Crowell,
This responds to your letters to Administrator David
Strickland, former Deputy Administrator Ronald Medford, and several other
officials of the National Highway Traffic Sfatey Administration (NHTSA), which
we received in October of 1012. Your letters have been referred to my office
for reply. You ask for help “correcting the violations found in automobile
interior partition performance” in police cruisers, limousines, utility vans
and taxicabs. The partitions separate the front seat occupants (particularly
the driver) from back seat passengers, primarily for security reasons. I will
refer to these as “security partitions.”
From the enclosures that you sent, I understand that you
believe that security partition can cause harm to drivers and passengers and
should not be installed in vehicles. You have written NHTSA on a number of
occasions since 1984 asking about the application of NHTSA regulations to
security partitions. Several offices of the agency have responded over the years,
including this office. On September 13th 1985, then Chief Counsel
Jeffrey R. Miller sent you a latter explaining how the agencies requirements
apply to security partitions.[1]
You state in a recent letter that NHTSA has been
inconsistent in responding to you and that you believe that a may 2nd,
2012 letter from the Office of Defects Investigation contradicts earlier agency
letters to you about security partitions. The 2012 letter highly focused on
answering your inquiry from the point of view of the defects investigators. The
1985 letter to you from the Chief Counsels’ office should serve to provide an
overall view of our requirements as applied to security partitions.[2] In
that letter we noted that Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 205
applies to such partitions. Since that letter we have issued various FMVSS’s,
including FMVSS No. 226 (Ejection Mitigatiion), which specifically excludes
certain vehicles that have such partitions, including the types of vehicles you
mention. We regret if our letters have caused any confusion.
In your current letters, and judging from your past letters
to NHTSA on this subject, it appears that you would like the agency to test and
possible remove the security partitions in the vehicles listed above. As to the
merits of the security partitions now in place, we were unable to verify your
letter’s references to the harm caused by security partitions. You are welcome
to submit any actual data you have supporting your claims. On the other hand, we acknowledge that
security partitions have a place in protecting the vehicle operator from
assailants. After considering the available information, including the possible
trade-offs to the safety and security of the operator in the absence of a
security partition, we regret to inform you that testing security partitions that
are now in taxicabs and police vehicles is not an initiative the agency will
pursue at this time.
In your letter, you ask a question about the New York City
Taxi and Limousines Commission’s (TLC’s) “Taxi of Tomorrow” program. We suggest
that you contact the TLC directly for information about the test program.
Sincerely,
O. Kevin Vincent
Chief Counsel
[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/138Q-QaZN1StPGYEQaokh0ZWTA574NN9iBFP6zRTnVBI/edit
[2] In a
September 19th 2005 letter to you from this office, we note that the
1985 letter to you has not substantively changed. We explain that the “Render
Inoperative” provision in the letter was recodified at 49 U.S.C S30122, but no
substantive change was made to the provision.
2 comments:
They still don't "get it".
"we were unable to verify your letter’s references to the harm caused by security partitions."
So, I must have fabricated all those doctors' comments!!
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