In addition to safety ratings, the Monroney (automobile price sticker) label includes fuel economy and country of origin information. Since September 2007, new passenger vehicles have been required to be labeled with safety rating information published by the NHTSA under NCAP. In July 2008, NHTSA announced a decision to enhance the NCAP ratings program.
The proposed label changes in this NPRM reflect the revised NCAP ratings program:
- Beginning with model year 2011, safety rating labels on new passenger vehicles that are manufactured on or after September 1, 2010, would be required to include as the first item of safety information in the safety rating label an overall vehicle score based on a vehicle’s frontal crash, side crash, and rollover resistance ratings. The agency would allow early compliance for model year 2011 vehicles that are manufactured before September 1, 2010.
- Language describing the nature and meaning of the NCAP test data used to generate vehicle safety ratings and a reference to www.safercar.gov for additional vehicle safety information the safety rating label would be revised slightly and, in some cases, relocated in the safety rating label.
- Safety concerns identified as a result of NCAP testing would need to be displayed in the overall vehicle score area of the safety rating label in addition to the appropriate area of the safety rating label to which the safety concern applies (frontal, side, or rollover).
All changes to the safety rating label proposed in this notice would apply to safety rating labels in the Monroney labels of passenger vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 10,000 pounds or less. Vehicles that have a Monroney label and that have been rated in at least one area under NCAP would need to display those ratings as described in this notice. Vehicles that display a Monroney label and that have not been rated under NCAP would be required to include in their Monroney label the smaller vehicle safety rating label, which indicates that the vehicle has not been rated.
The agency is seeking comments and plans to conduct consumer research into the extent to which consumers understand this approach, or other approaches, to communicating safety concerns. NHTSA also solicits public comments on the benefits the public would receive from a coordinated approach to any revisions of the Monroney label among the three agencies with authority over the different sections (the Department of Justice for price information, the Environmental Protection Agency for fuel economy, and NHTSA for safety and domestic content), and whether those benefits would outweigh any delays that might occur to achieve comprehensive and coordinated revisions to parts of the Monroney label.
NHTSA realizes that consumers could misinterpret or be confused by differences between ratings for model year 2010 and 2011 vehicles. Even when model year 2010 and 2011 vehicles achieve the same rating, consumers may not fully understand what this means. To address this, the agency plans to develop an educational toolkit and work with various partners to educate consumers about its new Government 5-Star Safety Ratings program.
Comments to NHTSA regarding this NPRM are due April 8, 2010.