Department of Transportation July 15, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This document responds to petitions for reconsideration of the October 1, 2004 final rule (69 FR 58843), which was in response to the initial petitions for reconsideration of the December 27, 2002 final rule (67 FR 79416) that established two new Federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSSs); FMVSS No. 403, Platform lift systems for motor vehicles, and FMVSS No. 404, Platform lift installations in motor vehicles. The purpose of these standards is to prevent injuries and fatalities during lift operation. In the October 2004 final rule the agency clarified the applicability of the standards as well as amended the definitions of certain operational functions, the requirements for lift lighting on public lifts, the interlock requirements, compliance procedures for lifts that manually deploy/stow, the environmental resistance requirements, the edge guard requirements, the wheelchair test device specifications, and the location requirements for public lift controls. The agency received petitions for reconsideration of the October 2004 final rule from a school bus manufacturer, a lift interlock/control manufacturer, a vehicle association, a school bus technical council and a dealer's association. The agency is denying the petitioners' request to require interlocks be designed to prevent ``malicious'' release and to place responsibility for lighting requirements under FMVSS No. 403. The request to amend the lighting intensity requirements under FMVSS No. 404 will be addressed in a separate notice as a petition for rulemaking.

In accordance with the procedures governing the application for, and the processing of, exemptions from the Department of Transportation's Hazardous Material Regulations (49 CFR part 107, subpart B), notice is hereby given that the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety has received the application described herein. This notice is abbreviated to expedite the docketing and public notice. Because the sections affected, modes of transportation, and the nature of application have been shown in earlier Federal Register publications, they are not repeated here. Request of modifications of exemptions (e.g. to provide for additional hazardous materials, packaging design changes, additional mode of transportation, etc.) are described in footnotes to the application number. Application numbers with the suffix ``M'' denote a modification request. Their applications have been separated from the new application for exemption to facilitate processing.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) publishes the names of the persons selected to serve on its Senior Executive Service Performance Review Board (PRB).