National Highway Traffic Safety Administration December 2, 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice of proposed rulemaking would establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 226, to reduce the partial and complete ejection of vehicle occupants through side windows in crashes, particularly rollover crashes. 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 (GVWR) of 4,536 kilogram (kg) or less (10,000 pounds (lb) or less). To assess compliance, the agency is proposing a test in which an impactor would be propelled from inside a test vehicle toward the windows. The ejection mitigation safety system would be required to prevent the impactor from moving more than a specified distance beyond the plane of a window. To ensure that the systems cover the entire opening of each window for the duration of a rollover, each side window would be impacted at up to four locations around its perimeter at two time intervals following deployment.