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Amitabha Bose,
Deputy Administrator.
BILLING CODE 4910–06–P
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Submission to the Office of
Management and Budget for Review
and Approval; Incident Reporting for
Automated Driving Systems (ADS) and
Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance
Systems (ADAS)
National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA),
Department of Transportation (DOT).
ACTION: Notice and request for
comments on a request for extension of
a currently approved information
collection.
AGENCY:
In compliance with the
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995
(PRA), this notice announces that the
Information Collection Request (ICR)
summarized below will be submitted to
the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) for review and approval. This
ICR describes NHTSA’s information
collection for incident reporting
requirements for Automated Driving
Systems (ADS) and Level 2 Advanced
Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and
its expected burden. NHTSA recently
requested emergency review of its
request for approval of this information
collection and received a six-month
approval. To start the normal clearance
procedures and request OMB’s approval
for a three-year extension of this
currently approved information
collection, NHTSA published a Federal
Register notice with a 60-day comment
period soliciting comments on the
information collection on September 30,
2021. NHTSA received 14 comments on
the notice, as well as four letters
regarding the information collection that
were submitted directly to NHTSA.
DATES: Comments must be submitted on
or before January 28, 2022.
ADDRESSES: Written comments and
recommendations for the proposed
information collection, including
suggestions for reducing burden, should
be submitted to the Office of
Management and Budget at
www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.
To find this particular information
collection, select ‘‘Currently under
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SUMMARY:
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Under the
PRA (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), a Federal
agency must receive approval from the
Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) before it collects certain
information from the public, and a
person is not required to respond to a
collection of information by a Federal
agency unless the collection displays a
valid OMB control number. In
compliance with these requirements,
this notice announces that the following
information collection request will be
submitted to OMB.
Title: Incident Reporting for
Automated Driving Systems (ADS) and
Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance
Systems (ADAS).
OMB Control Number: 2127–0754.
Form Number(s): Form 1612.
Type of Request: Approval of an
extension with modification of a
currently approved collection of
information.
Type of Review Requested: Regular.
Requested Expiration Date of
Approval: 3 years from date of approval.
Summary of the Collection of
Information:
NHTSA requested and received
emergency review and approval of this
information collection. NHTSA
submitted the request on June 29, 2021.
On June 30, 2021, OMB granted NHTSA
a six-month approval for this
information collection and assigned the
collection the OMB control number
2127–0754. NHTSA is publishing this
document to seek an extension of this
information collection.
NHTSA is seeking approval to extend
its currently approved information
collection requiring certain
manufacturers of motor vehicles and
equipment and operators of motor
vehicles to submit incident reports for
certain crashes involving Automated
Driving Systems (ADS) and Level 2
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
(ADAS). These crash reporting
obligations are set forth in NHTSA’s
Standing General Order 2021–01
(General Order) (as amended on August
5, 2021), which requires those
manufacturers and operators named in
and served with the General Order to
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
[Docket No. NHTSA–2021–0070]
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For
additional information or access to
background documents, contact Jeff
Eyres, Office of Chief Counsel,
telephone (202) 913–4307, or email at
[email protected], U.S. Department
of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey
Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
[FR Doc. 2021–28325 Filed 12–28–21; 8:45 am]
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report crashes that meet specified
criteria to NHTSA.1
Specifically, the General Order
requires the named manufacturers and
operators (the reporting entities) to
submit reports if they receive notice of
certain crashes involving an ADS or
Level 2 ADAS equipped vehicle that
occur on publicly accessible roads in
the United States. To be reportable, the
vehicle, the ADS, or the Level 2 ADAS
must have been manufactured by the
reporting entity or the vehicle must
have been operated by a reporting entity
at the time of the crash, and the ADS or
Level 2 ADAS must have been engaged
at the time of or immediately before
(≤30 seconds) the crash. In the event
that a reporting entity receives notice of
a reportable crash, the General Order
requires the reporting entity to submit
an incident report electronically to
NHTSA. The required report includes
basic information sufficient for NHTSA
to identify those crashes that warrant
follow-up. The reporting obligations are
limited to those entities named in and
served with the General Order. The
General Order imposes no reporting
obligations on any other companies and
likewise imposes no reporting
obligations on any individual
consumers.
The agency has received incident
reports for the past five months under
its 6-month emergency clearance. Based
on the agency’s experience in reviewing
these reports, and on the public
comments received in response to the
notice it published in the Federal
Register, NHTSA has decided to amend
the General Order. These changes, as
well as a more detailed explanation of
the information collection, is provided
below in the section discussing the 60day notice.
Description of the Need for the
Information and Proposed Use of the
Information
Under the National Traffic and Motor
Vehicle Safety Act, as amended (the
Safety Act), 49 U.S.C. Chapter 301,
NHTSA is charged with authority ‘‘to
reduce traffic accidents and deaths and
injuries resulting from traffic
accidents.’’ To carry out this statutory
mandate, NHTSA has broad information
gathering authority, including authority
to obtain information on vehicle
crashes, potential defects related to
motor vehicle safety, and compliance
with legal requirements to timely
identify and conduct recalls for safety
1 A copy of the General Order is available on
NHTSA’s website at https://www.nhtsa.gov/lawsregulations/standing-general-order-crash-reportinglevels-driving-automation-2-5.
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defects. 49 U.S.C. 30166(e), (g), 30118–
30120; 49 CFR Part 510.
NHTSA’s statutory mandate includes
the exercise of its authority to
proactively ensure that motor vehicles
and motor vehicle equipment, including
those with novel technologies, perform
in ways that protect the public against
unreasonable risk of accidents occurring
because of the design, construction, or
performance of a motor vehicle, and
against unreasonable risk of death or
injury in an accident. 49 U.S.C. 30102.
Both ADS and ADAS are ‘‘motor vehicle
equipment’’ subject to the requirements
of the Safety Act. Given the rapid
evolution of these technologies and
increasing testing of new technologies
and features on publicly accessible
roads, it is critical for NHTSA to
exercise its oversight over potential
safety defects in vehicles operating with
ADS and Level 2 ADAS. The Safety Act
is preventive, and the identification of
safety defects does not and should not
wait for injuries or deaths to occur.
ADS and Level 2 ADAS are new
technologies that fundamentally alter
the task of driving a motor vehicle.
Crashes involving vehicles equipped
with these technologies have resulted in
multiple fatalities and serious injuries,
and NHTSA anticipates that the number
of these crashes will continue to grow
in the near future given the increased
number of these vehicles on the road
and the increased number of vehicle
and equipment manufacturers in the
market. The General Order provides the
agency with critical and timely crash
data, which assists the agency in
identifying potential safety issues
resulting from the operation of
advanced technologies on public roads.
Access to this crash data may show
whether there are common patterns in
vehicle crashes or systematic problems
with specific vehicles or systems, any of
which may reflect a potential safety
defect.
NHTSA intends to evaluate whether
specific manufacturers (including
manufacturers of prototype vehicles and
equipment) are meeting their statutory
obligations to ensure that their vehicles
and equipment are free of defects that
pose an unreasonable risk to motor
vehicle safety, or are recalled if such a
safety defect is identified. NHTSA’s
oversight of potential safety defects in
vehicles operating on publicly
accessible roads using ADS or Level 2
ADAS requires that NHTSA have timely
information on incidents involving
those vehicles. In carrying out the Safety
Act, NHTSA may ‘‘require, by general or
special order, any person to file reports
or answers to specific questions.’’ 49
U.S.C. 30166(g)(1)(A).
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60-Day Notice
A Federal Register notice with a 60day comment period soliciting public
comments on the following information
collection was published on September
30, 2021 (86 FR 54287). The agency
received fourteen comments from
business, insurance, and industry
associations, safety and consumer
advocates, manufacturers and
developers, and an interested
individual. The agency also docketed
four letters regarding the General Order
that were received prior to publication
of the 60-day notice.
NHTSA received comments that both
supported NHTSA’s intention to seek
approval for a three-year approval from
OMB and comments that were not
supportive of the information collection
or expressed concerns about the current
requirements. In general, comments
from safety and consumer advocate
groups were more supportive and
comments from the industry and
industry groups expressed more
criticism of the information collection.
Specifically, NHTSA received
comments regarding the definitions of
‘‘notice’’ and ‘‘crash,’’ the reporting
requirements under Request No. 1, the
reporting requirements under Request
No. 2, the reporting requirements under
Request No. 3, the reporting
Requirements under Request No. 4, the
Incident Report Form, the requirement
that each reporting entity with notice of
a reportable crash file a separate report,
the burden placed by the General Order
on ‘‘vehicle suppliers,’’ the
requirements for submitting confidential
business information (CBI), and the
hourly burden estimates and associated
labor cost estimates. A summary of the
major comments and NHTSA’s
responses is provided below.
Comments on the Definition of ‘‘Notice’’
A reporting entity’s duty to submit an
incident report under the General Order
is triggered by notice of facts meeting
the criteria for different types of reports.
It is the reporting entity’s receipt of
notice of these facts, and not the
existence of a crash, that triggers the
duty to report.
The General Order includes the
following definition of the term
‘‘Notice’’:
‘‘Notice’’ is defined more broadly than in
49 CFR § 579.4 and means information you
have received from any internal or external
source and in any form (whether electronic,
written, verbal, or otherwise) about an
incident that occurred or is alleged to have
occurred; including, but not limited to
vehicle reports, test reports, crash reports,
media reports, consumer or customer reports,
claims, demands, and lawsuits. A
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manufacturer or operator has notice of a
crash or a specified reporting criterion (i.e.,
a resulting hospital-treated injury, fatality,
vehicle tow-away, air bag deployment, or the
involvement of a vulnerable road user) when
it has notice of facts or alleged facts sufficient
to meet the definition of a crash or a
specified reporting criterion, regardless of
whether the manufacturer has verified those
facts.
The General Order’s definition of notice
is intentionally broad and provides that
a reporting entity that receives
information from any source and in any
form, written or unwritten, verified or
unverified, constitutes notice of the
facts included in that information.2
Multiple commenters submitted
comments stating that this definition is
overly broad and creates an unnecessary
burden on the reporting entities. The
agency received comments on this issue
from the U.S. Chamber of CommerceTechnology Engagement Center
(‘‘C_TEC’’), the Consumer Technology
Association (‘‘CTA’’), the Self-Driving
Coalition for Safer Streets (‘‘the SelfDriving Coalition’’), the Alliance for
Automotive Innovation (‘‘Auto
Innovators’’), the Motor and Equipment
Manufacturers Association (‘‘MEMA’’),
and Aurora Operations, Inc. (‘‘Aurora’’).
Many of these comments focus on the
fact that notice can come in the form of
any information from any source. These
commenters suggest that this definition
should be narrowed to information
intentionally directed to the reporting
entity, information directed to a
specified group of individuals,
information in the form of a written
claim or notice, or to exclude media
reports.
The agency disagrees with these
comments. The agency has found,
through its own experience, that media
reports are a valuable source of initial
2 Although nothing in the General Order requires
a reporting entity to affirmatively seek out facts
about which it does not otherwise have notice, the
agency expects that manufacturers and operators, as
part of their ongoing defect identification and safety
procedures, will investigate safety-related incidents
with reasonable diligence. The agency likewise
notes that a manufacturer is required to notify
NHTSA if it ‘‘learns the vehicle or equipment
contains a defect and decides in good faith that the
defect is related to motor vehicle safety.’’ 49 U.S.C.
§ 30118(c)(1). The manufacturer must notify
NHTSA after it ‘‘first decides that a safety-related
defect’’ exists, 49 U.S.C. § 30119(c)(2), and must
also submit a defect report under Part 573, ‘‘not
more than 5 working days after a defect in a vehicle
or item of equipment has been determined to be
safety related.’’ 49 CFR § 573.6. The ‘‘good faith’’
requirement in Section 30118(c)(1) means that a
manufacturer must notify NHTSA within five
working days of when it actually identifies or, in
the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have
identified, a safety defect or noncompliance. See
United States v. Gen. Motors Corp., 656 F. Supp.
1555, 1559 n.5 (D.D.C. 1987), aff’d on other
grounds, 841 F.2d 400 (D.C. Cir. 1988).
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information regarding crashes of interest
and does not believe that notice should
come only in the form of written claims
or notices. The agency understands that
many of the reporting entities have
processes already in place to review
media stories regarding their vehicles
and crashes regarding those vehicles.
The agency also sees no reason to limit
the term notice to written claims or
notices directed to the reporting entity
as information regarding reportable
crashes can come from a variety of other
sources. The agency therefore declines
to limit this definition as suggested.
Other comments focused on the fact
that the definition of notice includes
any information received by the
reporting entity and is not limited to
specific individuals or employees
within a specific department, employees
of a certain seniority level, or employees
with responsibilities relating to the
review of and response to safety-related
information. These comments suggest
that the definition of notice should be
limited to information received by those
persons who normally receive
information regarding crash reports and
potential safety issues. Several
comments include hypotheticals in
which a production line employee or
other employee with no specific
responsibility for safety is told or reads
about a crash (perhaps even while the
employee is not working) that triggers a
reporting requirement.
The agency disagrees with these
comments, which appear to be largely
based on theoretical hypotheticals
rather than actual experience. As
explained, the definition of notice is
intentionally broad to ensure that the
agency receives timely notice of all
crashes that meet the reporting criteria.
The list of reporting entities includes
companies of different sizes and
structures, which makes it difficult to
identify a limited group of persons for
purposes of this definition. The agency
also notes that, despite the theoretical
hypotheticals, none of the comments
includes a real word example of actual
situations that resulted in confusion or
excessive burden. The agency is
likewise unaware of any reports that
have been submitted based on notice
received in a manner similar to those
suggested by these hypotheticals.
The agency need not, for the purposes
of responding to these comments,
engage in a legal analysis of whether
information received, for example, by a
production line worker, janitorial staff,
or a marketing intern constitutes
information received by the company.
The agency expects that each reporting
entity already has or will put into place
internal reporting processes and
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implement training that reflect the size,
nature, and business of that entity.
Nonetheless, the agency also states that,
if faced with a potential enforcement
issue involving, as the hypotheticals
suggest, an employee far removed from
any responsibility for receiving,
reporting, or analyzing potential safetyrelated information, the agency will
consider any appropriate enforcement
discretion warranted by the
circumstances.
Other comments focus on that portion
of the definition providing that a
company has notice of facts when those
facts are alleged, regardless of whether
the reporting entity has verified those
facts. These comments argue that
including facts that have not yet been
verified by the reporting entity
substantially decreases the value of the
reported information and increases the
burden on the reporting entities.
The agency disagrees with these
comments. The purpose of the General
Order is to provide the agency with
timely notice of crashes and
circumstances that may reflect a safetyrelated defect with ADS or Level 2
ADAS equipped subject vehicles. The
agency needs notice of these crashes
and allegations before a reporting entity
takes some indeterminate amount of
time to investigate and try to verify the
allegations, and the agency needs notice
of these allegations regardless of
whether they are disputed or have been
verified by the reporting entities. The
agency’s own experience likewise
counsels against limiting the scope of
the reporting obligation to those facts
that the reporting entity has verified or
does not dispute. To the extent a
reporting entity disputes the alleged
facts, considers the alleged facts
implausible, or even simply has not had
time to investigate, it is able to provide
that information and context in the
narrative section of the incident report.
Other comments attempt to draw
analogies with reporting requirements
that apply to manufacturers under the
agency’s EWR (also referred to as
TREAD) regulations. See 49 U.S.C.
30166; 49 CFR Part 579. These
comments argue that the scope of the
reporting obligations under the General
Order should be narrowed to make them
more similar in scope and burden to the
reporting obligations under the EWR
regulations. The agency disagrees with
these comments and notes once again
(as it did in its application for
emergency authorization and in the 60day notice) that one of the primary
reasons the agency issued the General
Order is that its existing information
gathering regulations are different in
scope (they apply only to
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manufacturers), in the information
required to be submitted (they require
no specific information about ADS or
Level 2 ADAS), and in the timeliness
with which the information is required
to be submitted (which is frequently
many months after an incident
occurred).
Comments on Definition of ‘‘Crash’’
A reporting entity’s reporting
obligation under the General Order is
limited to ‘‘crashes’’ that meet the
specified criteria. The General Order
includes the following definition of the
term ‘‘Crash’’:
‘‘Crash’’ means any physical impact
between a vehicle and another road user
(vehicle, pedestrian, cyclist, etc.) or property
that results or allegedly results in any
property damage, injury, or fatality. For
clarity, a subject vehicle is involved in a
crash if it physically impacts another road
user or if it contributes or is alleged to
contribute (by steering, braking, acceleration,
or other operational performance) to another
vehicle’s physical impact with another road
user or property involved in that crash.
Under this definition, a crash occurs
any time a motor vehicle impacts
another road user or property and the
impact results in property damage,
injury, or fatality. Likewise, a subject
vehicle is involved in a crash (which
may trigger a reporting obligation), even
if it is not involved in the resulting
impact, if it nonetheless contributes or
is alleged to contribute to the resulting
impact.
MEMA, Aurora, Auto Innovators, the
Self-Driving Coalition, and C_TEC each
submitted comments stating that the
definition of ‘‘crash’’ is overly-broad
and creates unnecessary burden because
it includes those impacts that result in
‘‘any property damage.’’ As the
comments note, ‘‘any property damage’’
could include a slight paint scratch from
a minor impact or other damage that
might otherwise be considered de
minimus. These comments state that
requiring reporting entities to submit
incident reports on these crashes
provides the agency with no useful
information while creating substantial
burden on the reporting entities. These
comments further suggest, as a proposed
solution, that the definition of ‘‘crash’’
should be amended to include a
threshold amount of damage such as
$250 or $1,000 or limited to damage
other than the subject vehicle itself.
The agency disagrees with these
comments. The agency notes first that
notice of an incident that meets the
definition of a crash, by itself, does not
trigger the obligation to submit an
incident report. To be reportable, the
crash must also meet the criteria
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specified in Request No. 1 or Request
No. 2.
To be reportable under Request No. 1,
which applies to both Level 2 ADAS
and ADS equipped vehicles, the crash
must also involve, among other criteria,
a fatality, a hospital treated injury, an
air bag deployment, a vehicle tow-away,
or a vulnerable road user (VRU). The
agency is unaware of any crash
involving one of these criteria that
resulted in only a minor paint scratch or
other de minimus damage and believes
that any such crash is extremely
unlikely to occur.
In contrast, under Request No. 2,
which applies to ADS equipped
vehicles, minor damage could result in
a reporting obligation under Request No.
2, if the ADS system was engaged 30
seconds or less prior to the start of the
crash. The concern expressed by these
comments is therefore limited to a small
subset of crashes involving ADSequipped vehicles rather than the
reporting obligations under the General
Order as a whole.
At this time, there are no ADS
equipped vehicles available for
consumer purchase or use. Instead,
these vehicles are typically operated as
test vehicles or for limited commercial
purposes such as taxi or delivery
services under special use permits from
State or local authorities and often
under exemptions granted by and/or
conditions imposed by the agency. As
NHTSA noted in the General Order,
‘‘ADS present new and unique risks to
motor vehicle safety because they
fundamentally alter the nature of motor
vehicles and their operation.’’ The
General Order therefore requires that
reporting entities submit incident
reports for all crashes involving ADS
equipped vehicles that meet the
reporting criteria under Request No. 2,
regardless of the extent or cost to repair
any resulting damage. The agency
believes that this reporting requirement
is necessary and appropriate and that it
does not create unnecessary or excessive
burden for operators and manufacturers
of ADS equipped vehicles and
equipment.
The agency also disagrees that a
reporting threshold based on the cost to
repair any resulting property damage
would have any material effect on the
burden imposed on the reporting
entities. To determine whether the cost
to repair resulting damage exceeds a
specific dollar value, the reporting
entity would have to engage in an
entirely different analysis that could
involve repair estimates and differing
cost structures depending on whether
the repair was performed internally or
by a third-party or whether parts were
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valued at wholesale or retail cost. A
crash involving a vehicle owned by a
large vehicle manufacturer with internal
repair facilities might therefore not be
reportable, while the same crash with
the same damage might be reportable to
a small developer that uses a third-party
repair facility. Enforcement issues could
likewise turn on whether the repair cost
of the damage was $75.00 or $1,025.00
rather than the simpler question of
whether there was any property damage.
The agency therefore declines to amend
the definition of crash to include a
threshold amount of damage.3
Several comments also focus the
clarifying statement in the definition
stating that a vehicle is involved in a
crash if it contributes or is alleged to
contribute to the crash and argue that
this statement makes the definition
ambiguous with respect to when a
vehicle is involved in a crash. The
agency disagrees with these comments.
The verb ‘‘contribute,’’ when used in its
intransitive form (as it is in the
definition of crash), has a commonly
understood meaning—‘‘to play a
significant part in making something
happen.’’ 4 A vehicle therefore is
involved in a crash if it physically
impacts another road user or if it plays
or is alleged to play a significant part
(by steering, braking, acceleration, or
other operational performance) in
causing another vehicle’s physical
impact with another road user or
property involved in that crash. The
agency does not believe this statement
is ambiguous or otherwise in need of
clarification.
Comments on Request No. 1
Under Request No. 1 of the General
Order, a reporting entity must report
any crash involving an ADS or Level 2
ADAS equipped vehicle that occurs on
publicly accessible roads in the United
States, where the ADS or Level 2 ADAS
was engaged at any time during the
period 30 seconds prior to the crash
through the end of the crash, and the
crash results in any individual being
transported to a hospital for medical
treatment, a fatality, a vehicle tow-away,
or an air bag deployment or involves a
vulnerable road user. Under these
circumstances, the reporting entity must
submit a report within one calendar day
after the reporting entity receives notice
of the crash, and an updated report is
3 For the avoidance of doubt, the agency also
confirms that the property damage referenced in the
definition of crash includes damage to the subject
vehicle itself and declines to amend the definition
of crash to exclude damage to the subject vehicle
itself.
4 See https://www.merriam-webster.com/
dictionary/contribute.
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due 10 calendar days after receiving
notice.
The 10-day report utilizes the same
form and requests the same information
as the one-day report. The 10-day report
is a required follow up to the one-day
report because it is anticipated that, for
some (if not many) of these reportable
crashes, the reporting entity will have
minimal information one calendar day
after it first receives notice. The General
Order therefore requires both the oneday report, to give the agency prompt
notice of a crash that may justify
immediate follow up, and the 10-day
report, to provide the agency with
additional information regarding the
crash about which the reporting entity
may later receive notice. Reporting
entities use the same incident report
form for 1-day and 10-day crashes, and
no different or incremental information
is required for the 10-day report.
Multiple commenters, including
C_TEC, Auto Innovators, CTA, Tesla,
Inc. (‘‘Tesla’’), the Self-Driving
Coalition, and MEMA, submitted
comments stating that the requirement
in Request No. 1 that an initial report be
submitted within one calendar day is
unnecessarily burdensome, provides no
meaningful benefit to the agency, and
increases the likelihood of inaccurate
information being submitted to the
agency. These comments focus on both
the 1-day deadline for submitting the
incident report, which requires
reporting entities to report quickly
following the receipt of notice, and the
fact that the 1-day deadline is one
calendar day rather than one business
day, which requires reporting entities to
monitor information and, if the criteria
are met, to submit incident reports on
weekends and holidays when the
deadline falls on these days. These
comments contend that the 1-day
deadline creates unnecessary burden
because a reporting entity has limited
time to evaluate the notice it receives,
determine whether a reporting
obligation exists, and to prepare and
submit an incident report if the crash is
determined to be reportable. Because
notice of a crash may come on a Friday
afternoon or on a weekend and because
the reports may need to be submitted on
a weekend or holiday (or during a
manufacturer’s shut-down period), there
is burden resulting from the need to
have employees working or at least ‘‘oncall’’ to review information and file any
required reports during these periods.
Many of these same comments suggest
that the requirement of a 10-day
updated incident report under Request
No. 1 creates unnecessary burden and
provides minimal information of value
to the agency. These same comments
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suggest that this burden could be
substantially reduced through a variety
of different changes, including changing
the deadlines from calendar days to
business days, eliminating the 1-day
report (i.e., requiring only a 10-day
report), combining the 1-day and 10-day
reports into a single 5-day report, and
permitting a reporting entity to
designate an initial report as ‘‘final’’ to
indicate that its investigation is
complete.5
The agency understands the burden
imposed by the 1-day and 10-day
reporting requirements under Request
No. 1. The agency also explained in its
60-day notice that the 1-day deadline is
necessary to ensure that the agency has
timely notice of those crashes reportable
under Request No. 1 and the ability to
timely respond to and investigate
crashes reportable under Request No. 1.
A later deadline could impede the
agency’s ability to respond or
investigate, for example, by deploying a
Special Crash Investigation (SCI) team
to inspect the accident scene or vehicle,
and a later deadline also could result in
the loss of valuable information that is
not properly preserved. The agency’s
experience since it issued the General
Order has confirmed the importance of
timely notice. The agency also has seen
that prompt notice is most valuable for
a subset of more serious crashes,
specifically those for which the agency
is most likely to send a team to
investigate. In order to maintain timely
notice with respect to these more
serious incidents and, at the same time,
reduce the resulting burden on
respondents, NHTSA has decided to
amend Request No. 1 of the General
Order to create a new 5-day reporting
category for some of these crashes.
Request No. 1 will be amended in a
manner that keeps the 1-day and 10-day
reporting sequence for any crash that
involves a fatality, a hospital treated
injury, or a vulnerable road user. For
those crashes reportable under Request
No. 1 that do not involve any of those
criteria but involve an air bag
deployment or a vehicle tow-away, the
reporting requirement will be amended
to a single incident report that must be
5 Several comments noted that the deadline for
reporting incidents in the agency’s Standing
General Order regarding Takata and ARC air bags
is 5 business days. See In re EA15–001 (Takata) Air
Bag Inflator Rupture and PE15–027 (ARC) Air Bag
Inflator Rupture, Standing General Order 2015–01A
Directed to Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (Aug. 17,
2015). The agency notes significant differences
between the two general orders, including that the
General Order 2015–01A required reporting entities
to inquire with their foreign offices regarding air
bag inflator ruptures that occurred outside the
United States and to file reports regarding any such
foreign incidents.
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submitted no later than 5 calendar days
after the reporting entity receives notice.
If the fifth calendar day falls on a
weekend or holiday, the reporting entity
may file this 5-day report early (i.e.,
before the fifth calendar day) to avoid
the burden of having to file such a
report on a weekend or holiday. For the
avoidance of confusion, the agency
makes clear that this change will not
take effect until the General Order is
formally amended to reflect this change.
Based on its experience with 5
months of reporting since the General
Order was issued, the agency estimates
that only 8% of the reports required
under Request No. 1 will involve a
fatality, a hospital treated injury, or a
vulnerable road user and therefore need
to be submitted under the 1-day and 10day sequence. The remaining reports,
those not involving any of those three
criteria but involving an air bag
deployment or vehicle tow-away, which
NHTSA estimates to be 92% of the
reports required under Request No. 1,
will require a single report within 5
calendar days of receiving notice. The
burden estimates set forth below have
been adjusted to reflect this forthcoming
amendment to the General Order.
Aurora also submitted comments
suggesting that Request No. 1 should be
amended to reduce the starting point for
the period during which the ADS or
Level 2 ADAS system must have been
engaged from 30 seconds prior to the
initiation of a crash to 5 seconds prior
to the initiation of a crash. The agency
declines to amend Request No. 1 in this
manner because it believes the proposed
amendment could prevent the agency
from receiving information relating to a
potential safety defect and because the
proposed amendment would not result
in any meaningful reduction in burden.
Comments on Request No. 2
Under Request No. 2 of the General
Order, a reporting entity must report
any crash involving an ADS equipped
vehicle that is not reportable under
Request No. 1, but nonetheless occurs
on a publicly accessible road in the
United States while the ADS system was
engaged at any time during the period
30 seconds prior to the crash through
the conclusion of the crash. As a
practical matter, therefore, the
differences between Request No. 1 and
Request No. 2 are that Request No. 2 is
limited to ADS equipped vehicles (and
does not include Level 2 ADAS
equipped vehicles) and that crashes
reportable under Request No. 2 do not
involve a fatality, hospital treated
injury, an air bag deployment, a vehicle
tow-away, or a vulnerable road user.
Upon receipt of notice of a crash
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reportable under Request No. 2, a
reporting entity must submit a report
regarding the crash on the fifteenth day
of the month after the reporting entity
receives notice.
CTA and the Self-Driving Coalition
submitted comments suggesting that
Request No. 2 should be eliminated
from the General Order because the
reported incidents, which do not
involve any of the criteria included in
Request 1.C, involve less serious crashes
that are unlikely to include any
meaningful data. These same
commenters suggested that, if Request
No. 2 is not removed from the General
Order, it should be modified to include
a minimum amount of crash damage as
a reporting threshold.
NHTSA disagrees with these
comments. For the same reasons
discussed above with respect to
comments regarding the definition of
‘‘crash,’’ the agency declines to amend
Request No. 2.
The Self-Driving Coalition’s
comments also suggested that Request
No. 2, which is limited to crashes
involving subject vehicles equipped
with ADS (and does not include subject
vehicles equipped with Level 2 ADAS),
places a disproportionate burden on
ADS manufacturers and operators. The
agency disagrees with these comments.
Given the unique nature of ADS and the
lack of ADS equipped vehicles for
consumer use and purchase, the agency
believes that the reporting requirements
in Request No. 2 are appropriate and are
not unduly burdensome.
Comments on Request No. 3
Request No. 3 requires reporting
entities to submit a supplemental report
on a previously reported incident the
month after it receives notice of any
material new or materially different
information about the incident. This
reporting obligation continues
throughout the duration of the General
Order.
Auto Innovators submitted comments
stating that the reporting obligations
under Request No. 3 are overly
burdensome, especially due to the
continuing nature of this obligation.
These comments state that, pursuant to
this obligation, reporting entities are
required to separately review every
incident for which a report was
previously filed in each subsequent
month to determine whether a
supplemental report is due. For reports
filed during the early months of the
General Order, this obligation will
continue throughout the three-year
requested extension, and, with the
passage of time, the number of prior
incidents that need to be reviewed each
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month will necessarily increase
significantly.
The agency disagrees with these
comments and believes they overstate
the burden resulting from Request No. 3.
The General Order does not require each
reporting entity to review each prior
report each month throughout the
duration of the General Order. Instead,
it requires a reporting entity that
receives material new or materially
different information regarding a crash
for which it previously filed a report to
file a supplemental report on the
fifteenth day of the month after it
receives notice of that information. The
agency expects that, in the months
immediately following the filing of an
initial incident report, the reporting
entity may need to carefully review
whether it has received notice of
information that triggers the obligation
to submit a supplemental report under
Request No. 3. With the passage of time,
however, the agency believes that the
burden resulting from Request No. 3
will diminish significantly.
Nonetheless, the agency will continue to
review reports submitted under Request
No. 3 and evaluate the benefit of this
information compared to the resulting
burden. If the agency determines that
this information is of little use and that
an amendment is appropriate, it will
have the benefit of the comments
submitted and the solutions proposed.
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Comments on Request No. 4
Request No. 4 of the General Order
requires any reporting entity that has
not submitted a monthly incident report
under Request No. 2 or a monthly
supplemental report under Request No.
3 to submit a report under Request No.
4 confirming that lack of reportable
information under Requests Nos. 2 and
3.6 To submit such a report, a reporting
entity need only log onto the internet
portal, select the appropriate type of
report on the drop-down menu, and
then fill in the month and year for
which the report is submitted.7
6 Although the text of the General Order is clear,
the agency notes, to avoid any confusion or
misunderstanding, that a report under Request No.
4 is due in ‘‘the absence of any new or updated
Incident Reports due under Request No. 2 and
Request No. 3.’’ Request Nos. 2, 3, and 4 each
involve monthly reports, and the General Order is
structured to require at least one monthly report
from each reporting entity each month. Request No.
1 is not a monthly report. Therefore, a reporting
entity that files a 1-day and/or 10-day report under
Request No. 1 during the prior month but not a
monthly report under Request Nos. 2 or 3 is still
required to file a monthly report under Request No.
4.
7 The month and year included in the report
should be the month and year for which the report
is confirming the lack of reportable information
under Request Nos. 2 and 3. A report filed on the
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The Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International
(‘‘AUVSI’’), MEMA, and the Self-Driving
Coalition submitted comments
expressing the view that these reports,
which contain no substantive crash
information, are unnecessary, serve no
useful function, and are therefore
unnecessarily burdensome. The agency
disagrees with these comments. The
General Order is drafted in a manner to
require that each reporting entity submit
at least one monthly report (i.e., a report
under Request No. 2, Request No. 3, or
Request No. 4.) per month.8
This requirement assists the agency in
determining whether all the reporting
entities are complying with their
reporting requirements. Absent the
reports required under Request No. 4,
the agency would not know, for
example, whether a reporting agency
had nothing to report or was simply
ignoring its reporting obligations. The
agency also believes that, for some
reporting entities, the obligation to file
a monthly report in the absence of any
reportable information under Request
Nos. 2 and 3 provides an important
reminder of the continuing obligation to
report crashes that meet the specified
criteria.
The burden associated with the
reports required under Request No. 4 is
minimal. A reporting entity should
know, at the end of each calendar
month, whether it is required to submit
a report under Request No. 2 or Request
No. 3. If a reporting entity has
determined that is required to file such
a report, there is no additional burden
in determining that no report is required
under Request No. 4. If the reporting
entity has determined that it need not
submit a report under Request No. 2 or
Request No. 3, then the reporting entity
need only fill in the month and the year
for which the report is submitted under
Request No. 4, which the agency
estimates should not take more than 15
minutes per month. The agency
therefore declines to amend the
reporting requirements set forth in
Request No. 4.
fifteenth day of a month should therefore include
the month and year for the prior month, which is
the period for which the report is confirming the
lack of reportable information. A reporting entity,
when required to submit a report under Request No.
4, need only file a single report under Request No.
4 in any given month. It is not required to file a
report under Request No. 4 for each previously
reported crash.
8 Because reports submitted under Request No. 1
are not monthly reports, a reporting entity that has
submitted a report under Request No. 1 but not a
monthly report under Request No. 2 or Request No.
3 is still required to submit a monthly report under
Request No. 4.
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Comments Regarding the Incident
Report Form
The General Order requires that
reporting entities submit incident
reports using a standard Incident Report
Form, an image of which is attached to
the General Order as Appendix C.
Pursuant to an August 5, 2021
amendment to the General Order, the
Incident Report Form was converted
into an interactive web-based form, and
all incident reports are now required to
be submitted through a dedicated portal.
Reporting entities use the same 1-page
Incident Report Form for filing reports
required to be submitted under Request
Nos 1, 2, 3, and 4. To minimize the
burden associated with this 1-page form,
much of the information is entered
through drop down menus, and the
interactive form eliminates the need to
submit information that is unnecessary
or not applicable due to the nature of
the report or a prior answer. A
‘‘narrative’’ section requires a free text
description of the accident and also
permits the reporting entity to enter any
additional information it believes is
important for context.
Several comments were submitted
that suggested changes to the form. The
agency likewise has made minor
clarifying changes to the form, none of
which is expected to impact the burden
associated with completing the form.
The current version of the form
includes a question about whether the
subject vehicle was, at the time of the
incident, operating within its operating
design domain (ODD) and the highest
level of automation (SAE Levels 2, 3, 4,
or 5) with which the vehicle was
equipped. To avoid any confusion, this
question will be divided into three
separate questions: (1) Whether the
vehicle was operating within its ODD at
the time of the crash; (2) whether the
vehicle was equipped with ADS; and (3)
whether the ADS was engaged at the
time of or immediately prior to the
crash. Each reporting entity will be
required to answer each of these
questions via a drop-down menu.
Reporting entities will have the option
of designating their response to the first
question as confidential business
information, but they will not be able to
designate their response to the second
or third questions as confidential
business information.9 The agency does
9 NHTSA has determined that the information
required by the second and third questions does not
include any potential CBI exempt from public
disclosure under either the Safety Act (49 U.S.C.
30167(a)) or the Freedom of Information Act (5
U.S.C. 552(b)(4)). The nature of the vehicle
information required by these questions (whether
the vehicle was equipped with ADS and whether
the ADS was engaged at the time of or immediately
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not believe this change adds any burden
associated with filling out the incident
report form.
The Self-Driving Coalition submitted
comments suggesting that the incident
report form should be modified to
change the question regarding ‘‘Highest
Injury Severity’’ to ‘‘Highest Injury
Severity Alleged’’ to reflect the
unverified nature of this information.
The agency agrees with this comment
and intends to modify the form to
incorporate this change.
AUVSI submitted comments
suggesting that the incident report form
should be amended to permit reporting
entities to designate reportable crashes
as preventable or not-preventable and
that data from crashes designated as notpreventable should not be included in
any aggregate data that is publicly
released by the agency. The agency
disagrees with this suggested change,
which is contrary to the nature and
purpose of the General Order.
Comments Regarding Crashes for Which
Multiple Reporting Entities are Required
To Submit Reports
The General Order requires each
reporting entity with notice of a crash
meeting the specified criteria to submit
an incident report. Because the General
Order includes vehicle manufacturers,
vehicle operators, and ADS and Level 2
ADAS developers (equipment
manufacturers), the agency expects that,
for certain crashes, multiple entities
may be required to submit incident
reports. For example, both a third-party
operator and an ADS developer are
likely to have notice of a crash involving
a vehicle from the developer’s test fleet
that is being operated by the operator.
Likewise, in other circumstances, both
an ADS developer and a vehicle
manufacturer are likely to receive notice
of a crash due to commercial
relationships. The agency established
these reporting requirements
intentionally, both because there is
value in collecting information from
different entities with different
perspectives relating to a crash and
because, under some circumstances, one
entity might receive notice of a crash
before the other entity.
Multiple commenters, including the
Self-Driving Coalition, MEMA, CTA,
Auto Innovators, and C_TEC were
submitted suggesting that these
prior to the crash) is generally made public by
commercial entities, law enforcement agencies, and
NHTSA. NHTSA, therefore, will not keep this
information confidential, intends to make it
publicly available, and is providing no assurance to
reporting entities to the contrary. See Food
Marketing Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, 139 S. Ct.
2356, 2363 (2019).
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‘‘duplicate’’ reports are unnecessary and
unduly burdensome. These comments
state that there is no incremental value
to collecting the same information from
multiple sources and that coordinating
the filing of these reports among
multiple entities is unnecessarily
burdensome. These comments further
state that this burden could be lessened
by permitting multiple entities to
designate a ‘‘primary’’ report filer or by
permitting one entity to ‘‘tag’’ others in
its report to eliminate the need for these
other reporting entities to file separate
reports.
The agency does not believe, as some
of these comments assert, that the
General Order’s current reporting
requirements are ‘‘unnecessarily
duplicative of information otherwise
reasonably accessible to the agency.’’ 5
CFR 1320.9(b). Instead, these reporting
requirements reflect the reality that one
reporting entity may have different
information than another reporting
entity or receive notice of that
information at a different time than
another reporting entity. The fact that
some or even all this information may
be the same for multiple entities with
respect to a given crash does not make
the reporting requirements
unnecessarily duplicative.
The agency is concerned that any
modification of these reporting
requirements that allows one reporting
entity to tag others or allows multiple
reporting entities to designate a primary
reporting entity would, for the reasons
explained above, frustrate the objectives
of these reporting requirements. Any
such modification could also create
significant enforcement issues if, for
example, the agency learned that crash
information about which one reporting
entity had notice was not included in
the incident report filed by another
reporting entity that tagged the others or
had been designated by others as
primary.
The agency also believes that the
burden concerns expressed in the
comments on this issue are over-stated
and that the proposed modifications
would not materially reduce the
resulting burden. If, as these comments
suggest, multiple reporting entities are
coordinating the review, analysis, and
reporting of crash information about
which they receive notice prior to filing
their respective reports, all of this
activity would still be necessary even if
one of these reporting entities tagged
others or was designated as primary by
others. Under these circumstances, the
only reduction in burden would be that
the tagged or non-primary reporting
entities would no longer have to
complete the administrative task of
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filling out and submitting the 1-page
incident report form. The current
reporting structure is likewise
appropriate for the reporting entities
that are not coordinating their efforts to
ensure the agency receives timely and
complete information. Nonetheless, the
agency will continue to review this
issue and consider ways to reduce
resulting burdens as appropriate. The
agency has the benefit of these
comments if it determines that any
changes to the existing reporting
requirements are appropriate.
Comments Regarding Unique Burdens
for Vehicle Suppliers
The list of responsible parties
included with the General Order
includes several ‘‘vehicle suppliers,’’
companies that supply various
components that are then integrated into
completed vehicles, ADS, or Level 2
ADAS, by other vehicle or equipment
manufacturers. Comments submitted by
MEMA and Auto Innovators suggested
that the General Order places unique
and excessive burdens on these
companies because, according to these
comments, they are required to conduct
an ongoing search for reportable crashes
involving vehicles, ADS, or Level 2
ADAS that might involve a component
or system they supplied and then
investigate at length to determine
whether they have a reporting
obligation. These comments suggest that
this alleged disproportionate burden on
these vehicle suppliers can and should
be reduced by limiting their reporting
obligations to vehicles in their own test
fleet, by amending the definition of
‘‘vehicle equipment’’ to eliminate any
reference to software or components,
and by clarifying the definition of
‘‘Level 2 ADAS.’’
The agency first notes that it did not
include any of these companies in the
General Order because they supply
components that are incorporated into
completed vehicles, ADS, or Level 2
ADAS. Instead, the agency included
these companies in the General Order
because the agency understands that
each of them is already or shortly will
be actively involved in the development
of ADS and/or Level 2 ADAS, including
testing that involves vehicles equipped
with these systems being driven on
publicly-accessible roads in the United
States.10
The agency also disagrees with these
comments, which appear to be based on
10 If the agency’s understanding is not correct
with respect to any specific reporting entity, it
encourages that company to contact NHTSA (the
General Order includes appropriate contact
information) to discuss whether it should remain in
the General Order.
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a misunderstanding of the reporting
requirements in the General Order and
overstate the resulting burden. As
previously noted, the reporting
obligations under the General Order are
triggered by notice of facts sufficient to
meet each of the reporting criteria. For
mass-produced consumer vehicles
equipped with Level 2 ADAS (which
appears to be the focus of these
comments and the source of this alleged
burden), a reporting entity has an
obligation to report a crash only if it
receives notice of information that
satisfied each of the following criteria:
(1) An ADS or Level 2 ADAS equipped
vehicle for which it supplied
components that were incorporated into
the motor was involved in a crash; (2)
the ADS or Level 2 ADAS was engaged
during the period thirty seconds prior to
and through the end of the crash; and
(3) the crash involved a fatality, hospital
treated injury, air bag deployment,
vehicle tow-away, or vulnerable road
user. The agency is unaware of any such
report being filed by any vehicle
supplier during the five months since
the General Order was first issued.
There is no general or specific
requirement that a reporting entity that
is a manufacturer or supplier of brake
pads, wiring harnesses, or lidar sensors
actively search outside the company for
potentially reportable crashes. Likewise,
there is no requirement that any such
reporting entity that learns of a crash
involving a vehicle that includes a
component it supplied actively
investigate the crash to determine
whether the other criteria have been
met. Instead, a vehicle supplier (like
every other reporting entity) that
receives notice of information meeting
each of the criteria must file a report.
The agency expects that it would be
extremely rare for any vehicle supplier
to receive such notice unless it was
significantly involved in developing,
testing, or supplying an ADS or Level 2
ADAS, in which case the agency
believes that the reporting requirement
is appropriate.
The agency also notes that Level 2
ADAS (and perhaps, in the future, ADS)
currently enter the consumer market in
different forms, including after-market
software and hardware components,
which are then integrated with other
existing vehicle components. Changing
the definition of motor vehicle
equipment as the comments suggests
would, contrary to the agency’s intent,
eliminate these after-market systems
from the scope of the General Order. For
all these reasons, the agency therefore
declines to modify the reporting
requirements as suggested by these
comments.
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Comments on Confidential Business
Information Designations
Under the terms of the General Order,
a reporting entity that claims
information it is submitting to the
agency in an incident report form
constitutes confidential business
information is required to follow the
agency’s standard procedures for
making such a claim. See 49 CFR Part
512. The Self-Driving Coalition and
Auto Innovators submitted comments
suggesting that the burden associated
with making a separate submission for
each incident report is excessive. These
comments suggest that the agency either
make a ‘‘class determination’’ that
certain information is protected CBI or
permit aggregated CBI submissions on a
weekly or monthly basis to lessen this
burden. These comments also suggest
that the burden associated with CBI
designations could be lessened if a
reporting entity was able to file its CBI
designations via the same portal
established for filing incident report
forms under the General Order.
The procedures for filing CBI
designations are established by the
agency’s regulations rather than the
General Order. See 49 CFR Part 512.
Although these regulations include
various ‘‘class determinations’’ (see, e.g.,
49 CFR 512 Appendix C), the agency
does not believe such a determination is
appropriate with respect to information
required to be submitted under the
General Order. The five months of
reporting history demonstrates that
there is no consensus approach to
whether reporting entities request CBI
treatment for this information.
With respect to the comments
regarding aggregated CBI requests or
utilizing the portal to submit CBI
requests, the agency is continually
reviewing various procedures under the
General Order to determine whether the
resulting burden can be reduced. The
agency will have the benefit of these
comments as it considers whether any
such changes are appropriate with
respect to CBI requests.
Other Comments
Multiple commenters submitted
comments stating that the agency
should expand the General Order to also
require reporting of incidents other than
the specified crashes (e.g., traffic
violations), suggesting different
development approaches (e.g., the use of
DoD/aerospace simulation and
modeling technology) for advanced
driving technologies, or offering
‘‘guiding principles’’ for the
development and/or regulation of
advanced driving technologies. The
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agency also received numerous
comments expressing concern or
offering suggestions regarding the way
information submitted by reporting
entities under the General Order will be
made public and whether appropriate
context will be provided with that
information. The agency appreciates
these comments and has reviewed them
with interest, but it declines to address
them in the context of this request for
an extension of the existing approval of
this information collection because they
are not burden related.
Agency Estimates Regarding the Annual
Number of Reports
In the 60-day Notice, NHTSA made
various estimates regarding the number
of incidents about which the reporting
entities would be required to submit
reports on an annual basis. Although
those estimates were made based on the
best information available to the agency
at the time, the agency now has over
five months of reporting data and
history and is therefore able to
substantially refine those estimates.
Level 2 ADAS 1-Day Incident Reports
Under Request No. 1
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that ‘‘it will receive responses
from 20 respondents reporting Level 2
ADAS crashes each year,’’ ‘‘that each
respondent will submit, on average, 170
incident reports per year,’’ and that it
‘‘will receive, on average 3,400 Level 2
ADAS incident reports each year.’’ The
agency explained that this was ‘‘a highend estimate’’ that would later be
refined.
Although the agency received no
comments directly addressing the
estimate of 3,400 incident reports per
year, several commenters used this
estimate (without providing any
alternative estimate) in support of
arguments that the burden associated
with these reports is excessive. With the
benefit of actual reporting history and
data, the agency is now able to
substantially revise this estimate to
1,000 reports per year under Request
No. 1 for Level 2 ADAS incidents.
As explained in more detail above,
the agency also has decided to amend
the reporting requirements in Request
No. 1 to require that a report be filed
within 1 calendar day only with respect
to those crashes involving a fatality, a
hospital-treated injury, or a vulnerable
road user. Based on data of reported
incidents through December 1, 2021, the
agency estimates that only 8% of the
reports required under Request No. 1
will meet one of these criteria.
Accordingly, NHTSA now estimates it
will receive 80 1-day Level 2 ADAS
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incident reports per year. Reporting
entities will be required to submit the
remainder of the reports (estimated to be
92% of the total) within 5 calendar days
after notice of the crash.
Level 2 ADAS 5-Day Incident Reports
Under Request No. 1
As discussed above, NHTSA is now
allowing some of the reports that were
previously required to be submitted
within one calendar day to instead be
submitted within 5 calendar days. The
agency estimates that 92% of all Level
2 ADAS crashes will be submitted in 5day incident reports. Accordingly, the
agency now estimates that of the 1,000
Level 2 ADAS incident reports
submitted each year, approximately 920
will be 5-day Level 2 ADAS incident
reports.
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Level 2 ADAS 10-Day Incident Reports
Under Request No. 1
Under the current terms of the
General Order, a reporting entity
submitting an initial report within 1
calendar day under Request No. 1 is also
required to submit an updated report on
the tenth calendar day after notice of the
crash. In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
therefore estimated the number of 10day updated reports to be equal to the
number of 1-day reports. As explained
above, the agency has decided to amend
Request No. 1 of the General Order to
limit the 1-day and 10-day reporting
sequence to crashes involving a fatality,
a hospital treated injury, or a vulnerable
road user. The agency estimates that 8%
of the reports required under Request
No. 1 will meet one of these criteria. No
10-day updated report therefore will be
required for the remaining reports
required under Request No. 1, an
estimated 92% of those reports.
Based on its revised volume estimates
and the forthcoming amendment to
Request No. 1, the agency revises its
estimate of the number of 10-day reports
to 80 reports each year.
ADS 1-Day Incident Reports Under
Request No. 1
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that it would receive 200
incident reports per year involving ADS
equipped vehicles. The agency further
estimated that half of these reports (100)
would be filed pursuant to the 1-day
and 10-day sequence under Request No.
1 and that the remaining half of these
ADS incident reports (100) would be
submitted under Request No. 2 as
monthly incident reports. With the
benefit of five months of reporting
experience and data, the agency is able
to refine these estimates. NHTSA
estimates that it will receive 150 ADS
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incident reports annually under Request
No. 1. However, as a result of the
amendment discussed above, not all of
those reports will be required to be
submitted within one calendar day.
Based on the discussed criteria and the
incident reports the agency has received
thus far, NHTSA estimates that 20% of
the reports will be required to be
submitted within one calendar day.
Accordingly, the agency now estimates
that it will receive 30 1-day reports each
year. Reporting entities would be
required to submit the remainder of the
reports within five calendar days of
receiving notice.
ADS 5-Day Reports Under Request No.
1
As discussed above, NHTSA estimates
that it will receive 150 ADS crash
reports under Request No. 1 each year
and that 20% of the reports will need to
be submitted within one day and 80%
will be required to be submitted within
five calendar days. Accordingly, the
agency estimates that it will receive 120
5-day ADS incident reports each year.
ADS 10-Day Update Reports Under
Request No. 1
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that the annual volume of 10day updated ADS reports would be the
same as the volume of 1-day ADS
Reports because the General Order
requires a 10-day updated report for
each 1-day report. Based on the revised
estimates and amendment discussed
above, the agency revises its estimate of
annual 10-day reports to 30 (the same
number as the estimated annual 1-day
ADS incident reports described above).
ADS Monthly Incident Reports Under
Request No. 2
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that it would receive 100 ADS
monthly incident reports per year under
Request No. 2. Based on the revised
estimates described above, the agency
revises this estimate to 200 ADS
monthly incident reports per year.
Monthly Supplemental Incident Reports
Under Request No. 3
A reporting entity is required to file
a monthly supplemental report under
Request No. 3 only if it receives notice
of new material or materially different
information regarding a crash for which
a report was previously submitted under
Request Nos. 1 or 2. In its 60-day Notice,
NHTSA estimated that it would receive
25 ADS and 170 Level 2 ADAS monthly
supplemental reports per year. With the
benefit of 5 months of reporting
experience, the agency revises this
estimate to 40 ADS and 75 Level 2
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74225
ADAS supplemental reports each
month.
Monthly Reports Under Request No. 4
In the absence of any new or
supplemental reports due under Request
No. 2 and Request No. 3, each reporting
entity is required to submit an Incident
Report confirming the lack of any
reportable information under those
requests on the fifteenth (15th) calendar
day of each month. In its 60-day Notice,
NHTSA estimated that 80% of the
reporting entities each month will
submit a report under Request No. 4.
Based on an average of 110 total
reporting entities per year, the agency
estimates that it will receive 1,056
reports annually under Request No. 4.
The total burden and cost estimates
set forth below have been revised
consistent with these revised annual
volume estimates.
Hourly Burden Estimates
NHTSA received three comments,
from Auto Innovators, MEMA, and the
Self-Driving Coalition, stating that the
agency underestimated the burden
hours associated with the different
reporting requirements. These
comments and the agency’s responses to
these comments are discussed in more
detail in the section below explaining
NHTSA’s burden calculations.
Labor Cost Estimates
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
explained that it had estimated the total
labor costs associated with burden
hours by looking at the average wage for
architectural and engineering managers
in the motor vehicle manufacturing
industry (Standard Occupational
Classification # 11–9041). The Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the
average hourly wage for this
occupational classification is $65.62 and
estimates that private industry workers’’
wages represent 70.4% of total labor
compensation costs. Therefore, the
agency estimated the hourly labor costs
to be $93.21.
Auto Innovators submitted comments
stating that the agency, as part of its
burden analysis, had underestimated
the hourly cost of the labor required to
meet the reporting obligations in the
order. This same commenter suggested
that, given the managerial and legal
review and oversight involved in this
information collection, a more realistic
hourly labor cost is $120.00. In response
to this comment, NHTSA is revising its
estimate of the labor costs associated
with burden hours, as discussed in the
section discussing NHTSA’s burden
estimates.
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Affected Public: Vehicle and
equipment manufacturers and operators
of ADS or Level 2 ADAS equipped
vehicles.
Estimated Number of Respondents:
110.
Frequency: Monthly and on occasion.
Number of Responses: 2,631.
Estimated Total Annual Burden
Hours: 31,319 hours.
As discussed above, NHTSA is
making changes to the General Order
that will affect the total burden hours.
The agency also has acquired new
information that allows the agency to
estimate burdens more accurately. To
estimate the burden associated with this
information collection, the agency
separated the requirements of the
General Order into thirteen components:
(1) Incident reports under Request No.
1 involving Level 2 ADAS that must be
submitted within one calendar day; (2)
updates under Request No. 1 to 1-day
incident reports involving Level 2
ADAS that must be submitted within
ten calendar days; (3) incident reports
under Request No. 1 involving Level 2
ADAS that must be submitted within
five calendar days; (4) incident reports
under Request No. 1 involving ADS that
must be submitted within one calendar
day; (5) updates under Request No. 1 to
incident 1-day reports involving ADS
that must be submitted within ten
calendar days; (6) incident reports
under Request No. 1 involving ADS that
must be submitted within five calendar
days; (7) monthly incident reports under
Request No. 2 involving ADS that must
be submitted on the fifteenth of the
following month; (8) monthly
supplemental reports under Request No.
3 involving Level 2 ADAS incidents that
must be submitted on the fifteenth of
the following month; (9) monthly
supplemental reports under Request No.
3 involving ADS that must be submitted
on the fifteenth of the following month;
(10) monthly reports under Request No.
4 confirming the lack of reportable
information under Requests No. 2 and
No. 3, (11) additional time for screening
incoming information; (12) training
employees on the requirements; and
(13) time to set up an account to submit
the reports. The burden associated with
categories (12) and (13) are one-time
start-up burdens that will be incurred
during the proposed extension only to
the extent that new reporting entities are
added to the General Order during this
period. For the 108 reporting entities
currently named in the General Order,
this burden has already been and was
accounted for under the currently
approved information collection
request.
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The estimated number of respondents
consists of the number of reporting
entities.
NHTSA estimates that there will be an
average of 110 reporting entities during
each year of the proposed extension.
Currently, there are 108 reporting
entities named in the General Order.
The agency believes that additional
reporting entities will be added to the
General Order during the proposed
extension as new companies enter the
market and begin developing and
manufacturing ADS and ADAS
technology and vehicles equipped with
these technologies. The agency also
believes that some existing reporting
entities will be removed from the
General Order due to the cessation of
operations or market consolidation.
Burden Category 1: ADAS 1–Day
Reports under Request No. 1.
To estimate the burden associated
with submitting Level 2 ADAS crash
reports, NHTSA first looked to the
category of crashes that must be
reported. As explained above, the
agency has decided to amend the
General Order to only require reporting
of Level 2 ADAS crashes within one
business day when (1) the crash
occurred on a publicly accessible road
in the United States (including any of its
territories); (2) the Level 2 ADAS was
engaged at any time during the period
from 30 seconds immediately prior to
the commencement of the crash through
the conclusion of the crash; and (3) the
crash resulted in a fatality, a hospital
treated injury, or involved a vulnerable
road user. Incidents meeting the first
two criteria and also involving a vehicle
tow-away or an air bag deployment, but
not involving a fatality, hospital treated
injury, or vulnerable road user will be
required to be reported within five
calendar days.
As discussed above and based on five
months of incident reporting under the
existing clearance, NHTSA estimates
that it will receive approximately 80 1day Level 2 ADAS incident reports each
year. Based on the number of
manufacturers that manufacture
vehicles equipped with Level 2 ADAS
systems, the agency estimates that it
will receive responses from 20
respondents reporting Level 2 ADAS
crashes each year.
In the 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that it would take
respondents approximately 2 hours to
compile and submit each crash report.
The agency received comments from
Auto Innovators, MEMA, and the SelfDriving Coalition stating that NHTSA
had underestimated the burden hours
for the reporting requirements.
Specifically, Auto Innovators stated that
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a more accurate estimate would be 8
hours for each 1-day incident report.
The Self-Driving Coalition also provided
estimates of the burden hours for 1-day
reports (between 5 and 12 hours), but
since the estimates were provided for
ADS 1-day reports, NHTSA is using the
estimate provided by Auto Innovators.
NHTSA now estimates that 1-day
reports takes, on average, 8 hours.
Therefore, the agency estimates the total
annual burden hours for submitting
Level 2 ADAS 1-day crash reports to be
640 hours (8 hours × 80 crash reports)
for all manufactures. Therefore, the
average burden for the estimated 20
manufacturers submitting 1-day ADAS
incident reports is estimated to be 32
hours.
Burden Category 2: ADAS 10-Day
Reports Under Request No. 1.
As discussed above, in addition to
submitting information on certain Level
2 ADAS crashes within one day,
reporting entities must also submit
updated information within ten days.
NHTSA has decided to only require 10day update reports for incidents
required to be reported within one
calendar day. In the 60-day notice,
NHTSA estimated that providing
updated crash reports would take
approximately 1 hour per report.
However, both Auto Innovators and the
Self-Driving Coalition submitted
comments stating that NHTSA
underestimated the burden for
submitting the reports. Auto Innovators
stated that a reasonable mid-point in the
burden estimates from members would
be 20 hours to submit these updates and
the Self-Driving Coalition stated that it
would take between 3 and 24 hours,
depending on the complexity of the
incident. Since the Self-Driving
Coalition’s comments were specific to
ADS reporting, NHTSA is revising its
estimate based on the Auto Innovators’’
comment and now estimating that
providing an updated 10-day report will
take 20 hours. Therefore, the agency
estimates that the total burden for
submitting 10-day update reports for
Level 2 ADAS incidents will take 1,600
hours (20 hours × 80 reports), for an
average of 80 hours for each of the 20
reporting entities expected to submit
reports each year.
Burden Category 3: ADAS 5-Day
Reports Under Request No. 1.
To estimate the burden associated
with submitting Level 2 ADAS 5-day
crash reports, NHTSA first looked to the
category of crashes that must be
reported. As explained above, the
agency has decided to amend the
General Order to require 5-day reporting
of Level 2 ADAS crashes when (1) the
crash occurred on a publicly accessible
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road in the United States (including any
of its territories); (2) the Level 2 ADAS
was engaged at any time during the
period from 30 seconds immediately
prior to the commencement of the crash
through the conclusion of the crash; and
(3) and the crash involves a vehicle towaway or an air bag deployment, but not
a fatality, hospital treated injury, or
vulnerable road user. As discussed
above and based on five months of
incident reporting under the existing
clearance, the agency estimates that it
will receive approximately 920 5-day
Level 2 ADAS incident reports each
year. Based on the number of reporting
entities that manufacture Level 2 ADAS
or vehicles equipped with Level 2
ADAS systems, the agency estimates
that it will receive responses from 20
respondents reporting Level 2 ADAS
crashes each year.
In the 60-day notice, NHTSA
estimated that it would take
respondents approximately 2 hours to
compile and submit each 1-day crash
report. The agency received comments
from Auto Innovators, MEMA, and the
Self-Driving Coalition stating that
NHTSA had underestimated the burden
hours for the reporting requirements.
Specifically, Auto Innovators stated that
the average submission would take 8
hours for each 1-day incident report.
The Self-Driving Coalition also provided
estimates of the burden for 1-day
incident reports (between 5 and 12
hours) for ADS 1-day reports. NHTSA
also received comments from Auto
Innovators and the Self-Driving
Coalition that stated that updated
reports may take longer to submit than
initial reports.
Because reporting entities will not be
required to submit 10-day update
reports for incidents required to be
submitted to NHTSA within five
business days, and because after five
days more information may be available
for review, the agency is basing its
estimate of burden for 5-day reports off
the burden estimates provided by
commenters for the 10-day update
report. Auto Innovators stated that a
reasonable mid-point in the burden
estimates from members would be 20
hours to submit updates and the SelfDriving Coalition stated that it would
take between 3 and 24 hours, depending
on the complexity of the incident.
Because the Self-Driving Coalition’s
comments regarding burden were
specifically for ADS crash reporting,
NHTSA believes it is appropriate to use
different burden estimates for Level 2
ADAS reporting and ADS reporting.
Based on the comments, it appears that
larger manufacturers reporting on Level
2 ADAS reports will require more time
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to submit 5-day reports than smaller
entities submitting 5-day reports for
ADS crashes. Therefore, NHTSA has
decided to change its estimate based on
the mid-point estimate provided by
Auto Innovators. Accordingly, the
agency estimates that 5-day reports
takes, on average, 20 hours. Therefore,
the agency estimates the total annual
burden hours for submitting Level 2
ADAS 5-day crash reports to be 18,400
hours (20 hours × 920 crash reports) for
all reporting entities for an average of
920 hours for each of the estimated 20
reporting entities submitting 5-day
incident reports.
Burden Category 4: ADS 1-Day
Reports Under Request No. 1.
As discussed above, NHTSA now
estimates that it will receive 30 ADS 1day incident reports each year. In the
60-day notice, NHTSA estimated that it
would take respondents approximately
2 hours to compile and submit each
crash report. The agency received
comments from Auto Innovators,
MEMA, and the Self-Driving Coalition
stating that the agency had
underestimated the burden hours for the
reporting requirements. Specifically,
Auto Innovators stated that a more
accurate estimate would be 8 hours for
each 1-day incident report and the SelfDriving Coalition stated that 1-day
reports take between 5 and 12 hours.
Based on these comments, the agency
now estimates that 1-day reports takes,
on average, 8 hours. Therefore, the
agency estimates the total annual
burden hours for submitting ADS 1-day
crash reports to be 240 hours (8 hours
× 30 crash reports) for all manufactures.
Based on the five months of reporting
experience, the agency believes that
some respondents with ADS 1-day
reports will file multiple reports. At this
time, the agency estimates that the 30 1day reports will be submitted by 20
manufacturers, for an average of 12
hours per respondent.
Burden Category 5: ADS 5-Day
Reports under Request No. 1.
As discussed above, NHTSA now
estimates that it will receive 120 ADS 1day incident reports each year. In the
60-day notice, NHTSA estimated that it
would take respondents approximately
2 hours to compile and submit each 1day crash report. The agency received
comments from Auto Innovators,
MEMA, and the Self-Driving Coalition
stating that NHTSA had underestimated
the burden hours for the reporting
requirements. Specifically, Auto
Innovators stated that a more accurate
estimate would be 8 hours for each 1day incident report and the Self-Driving
Coalition stated that 1-day reports take
between 5 and 12 hours. The agency
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74227
also received comments from Auto
Innovators and the Self-Driving
Coalition stating that updated reports
may take longer to submit than initial
reports. Because reporting entities will
not be required to submit 10-day update
reports for incidents required to be
submitted to the agency within five
business days, and because after five
days more information may be available
for review, the agency is basing its
estimate of burden for 5-day reports off
the burden estimates provided by
commenters for the 10-day update
report. Auto Innovators stated that it
would take 20 hours to submit updates
and the Self-Driving Coalition stated
that it would take between 3 and 24
hours, depending on the complexity of
the incident. Because the agency
estimates that information will be more
readily accessible to reporting entities
for incidents involving ADS, NHTSA
estimates that 5-day reports take, on
average, 14 hours (based on the midpoint between 3 and 24 hours).
Therefore, the agency estimates the total
annual burden hours for submitting
ADS 5-day crash reports to be 1,680
hours (14 hours × 120 crash reports) for
all reporting entities. Based on the
number of respondents that have
submitted ADS reports under the
General Order thus far, the agency
estimates that it will receive ADS 5-day
reports from an average of 40 entities
each year. Therefore, the average annual
burden per reporting entity is estimated
to be 42 hours.
Burden Category 6: ADS 10-Day
Reports under Request No. 1.
As discussed above, in addition to
submitting information on certain ADS
crashes within one day, reporting
entities must also submit updated
information within ten days. NHTSA
has decided to only require 10-day
update reports for incidents required to
be reported within one calendar day. In
the 60-day notice, NHTSA estimated
that providing updated crash reports
would take approximately 1 hour per
report. However, both Auto Innovators
and the Self-Driving Coalition submitted
comments stating that the agency
underestimated the burden for
submitting the reports. Auto Innovators
stated that it would take 20 hours to
submit updates and the Self-Driving
Coalition stated that it would take
between 3 and 24 hours, depending on
the complexity of the incident. Because
the agency estimates that information
will be more readily accessible to
reporting entities for incidents involving
ADS, NHTSA estimates that 5-day
reports take, on average, 14 hours (based
on the mid-point between 3 and 24
hours). Therefore, the agency estimates
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that the total burden for submitting 10day update reports for ADS incidents to
be 420 hours for all ADS manufacturers
and operators (14 hours × 30 crash
reports). As discussed above, the agency
estimates that it will receive one-day
ADS incident reports from 20
respondents each year. Therefore, the
agency estimates that the annual burden
is, on average, 21 hours per respondent.
Burden Category 7: Monthly ADS
Incident Reports Under Request No. 2.
As described above, NHTSA now
estimates that there will be 200 ADS
crash reports required to be submitted
on the fifteenth of the month following
the month in which notice of the crash
was received. In the 60-day notice,
NHTSA estimated that preparing and
submitting monthly reports that contain
crash reports takes, on average, 2 hours
to prepare and submit. However, the
agency received a comment from the
Self-Driving Coalition stating that the
actual burden for this can be between 2
and 24 hours. Based on this comment,
NHTSA now estimates that the burden
associated with preparing and
submitting initial ADS crash report
information that will be submitted in
monthly reports to be 14 hours per
report, for a total of 2,800 hours (14
hours × 200 reports). Based on the
number of respondents that have
submitted ADS crash report
information, the agency estimates that it
will receive reports from approximately
50 entities each year, for an average of
56 hours per entity.
Burden Category 8: ADAS
Supplemental Reports Under Request
No. 3.
In addition to submitting information
about new ADS crashes in monthly
reports, respondents also are required to
submit updated information in the
following month if any new material or
materially different information about
any Level 2 ADAS incident is received.
In its 60-day notice, NHTSA estimated
that it would receive 170 ADAS
monthly supplemental reports per year.
With the benefit of 5 months of
reporting experience, the agency revises
this estimate to 75 supplemental ADAS
reports each year. In the 60-day notice,
NHTSA estimated that providing
updated information within a monthly
report would take 1 hour. The agency
received comments indicating that it
had underestimated burden, but it did
not receive specific comments on the
time spent submitting a supplemental
report on the fifteenth of the month
following the month in which it
received any material new or materially
different information. The agency
believes that submitting a supplemental
report should take less time that
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submitting an initial report or a ten-day
update report. However, the agency
concedes that reporting entities may
require more time for internal review
than 1 hour. Accordingly, the agency
now estimates that preparing and
submitting supplemental reports takes,
on average, 5 hours. Therefore, the
agency estimates the burden for
monthly reports with updated
information to be 375 hours (75 monthly
reports × 5 hours). The agency estimates
that it will receive, on average,
supplemental Level 2 ADAS monthly
reports from 20 respondents each year,
for an average of 18.75 hours per
respondent.
Burden Category 9: ADS
Supplemental Reports Under Request
No. 3.
In addition to submitting information
about new ADS crashes in monthly
reports, respondents also are required to
submit updated information in the
following month if any new material or
materially different information about
any ADS incident is received. In its 60day notice, NHTSA estimated that it
would receive 25 ADS monthly
supplemental reports per year. With the
benefit of 5 months of reporting
experience, the agency revises this
estimate to 40 supplemental ADS
reports each year. In the 60-day notice,
NHTSA estimated that providing
updated information within a monthly
report would take 1 hour. The agency
received comments indicating that it
had underestimated burden, but it did
not receive specific comments on the
time spent submitting a supplemental
report on the fifteenth of the month
following the month in which it
received any material new or materially
different information. The agency
believes that submitting a supplemental
report should take less time than
submitting an initial report or a ten-day
update report. However, the agency
concedes that reporting entities may
require more time for internal review
than 1 hour. Accordingly, the agency
now estimates that preparing and
submitting supplemental reports takes,
on average, 5 hours. Therefore, the
agency estimates the burden for
monthly reports with updated
information to be 200 hours (40 monthly
reports × 5 hours). The agency estimates
that it will receive, on average, monthly
reports from 25 respondents each year,
for an average of 8 hours per
respondent.
Burden Category 10: Monthly Reports
under Request No. 4.
A reporting entity that determines it
has no information reportable under
Request Nos. 2 and 3 is required to
submit a report confirming the lack of
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any such reportable information. The
hourly burden associated with
submitting a monthly report under
Request No. 4 is minimal. The reporting
entity need only select the proper type
of report, identify the date and month
for which the report is being submitted,
and then submit the report.
In the 60-day notice, NHTSA
estimated that the burden for ADS
manufacturers and operators associated
with preparing and submitting any
monthly reports to be 15 minutes. The
agency received one comment from the
Self-Driving Coalition that confirmed
that 15 minutes was accurate for its
members. The agency estimated that
burden for ADAS manufacturers
associated with preparing and
submitting any monthly reports would
be 2 hours. The agency received a
comment from Auto Innovators stating
that monthly reports under Request No.
4 take respondents 20 hours to prepare
and submit.
NHTSA does not agree that
submitting a report under Request No. 4
(confirming the lack of information
reportable under Request Nos. 2 and 3)
will take 20 hours. The agency believes
that reporting entities should not have
any additional burden associated with
confirming that they do not have
reportable information. Instead, NHTSA
believes that respondents have
screening processes to ensure they are
meeting their requirements to submit
reports under Requests Nos. 1, 2, and 3
under the General Order. NHTSA
believes that adequate screening
processes should ensure that there is no
additional burden associated with
monthly reports under Request 4.
However, as mentioned by some of the
commenters, the agency did not
estimate any ongoing burden for
enhanced screening processes. In
response, NHTSA is creating a new
category of burden to account for any
screening that is incurred in response to
the General Order and is not part of
reporting entities’ standard operating
practices.
In its 60-day Notice, NHTSA
estimated that 80% of the reporting
entities each month will submit a report
under Request No. 4. Based on five
months of reporting under the General
Order, NHTSA continues to estimate
that 80% of reporting entities will
submit a report under Request No. 4
each month. Based on an average of 110
total reporting entities per year, the
agency estimates that it will receive
1,056 reports annually under Request
No. 4.
Accordingly, NHTSA estimates that
preparing and submitting a monthly
report under Request No. 4 will take 15
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minutes for the estimated 90 ADS
reporting entities and the estimated 20
manufacturers of Level 2 ADAS vehicles
each year (including manufacturers that
produce both Level 2 ADAS vehicles
and ADS vehicles). Therefore, the
agency estimates that annually
respondents will spend 264 hours
preparing and submitting monthly
reports under Request No. 4, not
including burden associated with
providing new or updated reportable
information (110 respondents × .8 × 12
monthly reports × 0.25 hours).
Burden Category 11: Additional
Screening.
As discussed above, and in response
to comments, NHTSA is adding a new
category for screening. NHTSA received
comments from both the Self-Driving
Coalition and Auto Innovators regarding
uncounted burden. Specifically, Auto
Innovators stated that NHTSA had not
counted burden for monitoring for new
crashes and the Self-Driving Coalition
stated that NHTSA had not included
time spent reviewing incidents that
occur but are not reportable. In response
to these comments, NHTSA is adding a
new burden category for additional time
spent screening incoming information.
The additional time allotted for
screening accounts for any additional
processes reporting entities have needed
to put in place to ensure that they are
meeting their reporting requirements
under the General Order. This time does
not account for screening of incidents
that reporting entities conducted as part
of its standard business practices prior
to the General Order. Although NHTSA
did not receive comments about the
amount of additional burden
respondents will incur, NHTSA believes
that the Auto Innovator’s comment
regarding burden for ‘‘no reportable
information’’ monthly reports provides
an indication of the additional time
some entities spend each month
ensuring that they are meeting their
reporting obligations. Specifically, Auto
Innovators provided a monthly average
estimate of 20 burden hours. Since
manufacturers and operators of ADSequipped vehicles and equipment
already had robust processes for
identifying and analyzing crashes that
might occur with these vehicles,
NHTSA estimates that the additional
screening burden will only be incurred
by entities reporting on Level 2 ADAS
crashes, as those reports largely involve
crashes in the consumer fleet.
Accordingly, the agency estimates that
the estimated 20 entities reporting on
Level 2 ADAS incidents have, on
average, 20 hours of additional
screening time per month, for a total of
4,800 hours a year (20 hours × 12
months × 20 respondents), or 240 hours
per reporting entity.
Burden Category 12: Training
employees on the reporting
requirements.
In addition to the burden associated
with preparing and submitting reports,
any new reporting entities added to the
General Order are also expected to incur
burden associated with training
employees on the reporting
requirements. As explained above, the
existing 108 reporting entities named in
the General Order will not incur this
burden during the requested extension
because they have already trained their
employees. NHTSA estimates that there
will be an average of seven new
reporting entities added to the General
Order each year during the proposed
extension, that an average of five of
these new reporting entities will be ADS
manufacturers or operators and that an
average of two of these new reporting
entities will be Level 2 ADAS
manufacturers.
The agency expects that ADS
manufacturers and operators normally
monitor all crashes and, therefore, will
not need to train personnel on how to
respond to this new information
collection. NHTSA does expect,
however, that some Level 2 ADAS
manufacturers may need to spend time
training personnel on the requirements.
Although the amount of time may vary
by manufacturer, NHTSA estimates that,
on average, the two Level 2 ADAS
manufacturers will spend 40 hours on
training. Therefore, NHTSA estimates
the total annual burden for training to
be 80 hours (2 manufacturers × 40
hours).
Burden Category 13: Time to set up an
account to submit the reports.
NHTSA also estimates that new
responding entities added to the General
Order during the proposed extension
period will need to set up a new
account with the agency to allow them
to submit reports. NHTSA estimates that
each of the estimated average of 10
responding entities added to the General
Order annually need to set up new
accounts with the agency. NHTSA
estimates that setting up an account will
take 2 hours. Therefore, the agency
estimates the total annual burden to be
20 hours.
NHTSA estimates the total annual
burden hours for the thirteen
components of this ICR to be 31,319
hours (640 hours for initial one-day
Level 2 ADAS reports, 1,600 hours for
updated one-day Level 2 ADAS reports,
18,400 hours for five-day Level 2 ADAS
reports, 240 hours for initial one-day
ADS reports, 420 hours for updated
ADS reports, 1,680 hours of five-day
ADS reports, 2,600 hours for monthly
initial ADS reports, 375 hours for
monthly supplemental Level 2 ADAS
reports, 200 hours for monthly
supplemental ADS reports, 264 hours
for ‘‘no reportable information’’ monthly
reports, 4,800 for additional screening,
80 hours for training, and 20 hours for
setting up accounts). This revised
estimate reflects five months of crash
reporting experience under the existing
clearance, which allows the agency to
refine and better estimate the annual
volumes of different types of reports it
will receive. This revised estimate also
reflects the agency’s adoption of
commenters’ estimates of the hours
required for individual burden tasks.
Although the agency believes that the
commenters’ estimates may represent
the high end of the range of burden
hours for respondents, and not the
average, the commenters’ estimates are
the best data currently available to the
agency. Table 1 provides a summary of
the estimated burden hours.
TABLE 1—BURDEN HOUR ESTIMATES
khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with NOTICES
Description of burden category
(this ICR is for one IC)
Number of
responses
Level 2 ADAS one-day reports, initial Request No. 1 .........
Level 2 ADAS one-day reports, update Request No. 1 ......
Level 2 ADAS five-day reports Request No. 1 ....................
ADS one-day reports, initial Request No. 1 ........................
ADS one-day reports, update Request No. 1 .....................
ADS five-day reports Request No. 1 ...................................
Monthly Report-Initial ADS Request No. 2 ..........................
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20:20 Dec 28, 2021
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Frm 00167
Number of
respondents
80
80
920
30
30
120
200
Fmt 4703
Sfmt 4703
20
20
20
20
20
40
50
Estimated burden per response
8 hours ..........
20 hours ........
20 hours ........
8 hours ..........
14 hours ........
14 hours ........
13 hours ........
E:\FR\FM\29DEN1.SGM
29DEN1
Burden per
respondent
(hours)
32
80
920
12
21
42
52
Total burden
hours
640
1,600
18,400
240
420
1,680
2,600
74230
Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 247 / Wednesday, December 29, 2021 / Notices
TABLE 1—BURDEN HOUR ESTIMATES—Continued
Description of burden category
(this ICR is for one IC)
Number of
responses
Monthly Report-Level 2 ADAS Supplemental Request No.
3.
Monthly Report-ADS Supplemental Request No. 3 ............
Monthly Reports-No reportable Information Request No. 4
Additional Screening ............................................................
Training ................................................................................
Setting Up Account ..............................................................
Total for ICR: Level 2 ADAS/ADS Incident Reporting
In the 60-day notice, NHTSA
calculated the burden associated with
the labor hours using the average wage
for architectural and engineering
managers in the motor vehicle
manufacturing industry (Standard
Occupational Classification # 11–9041).
NHTSA received one comment, from
Auto Innovators, stating that the labor
cost estimate was too low, and that a
labor cost of at least $120 per hour was
more realistic. In response to this
comment, NHTSA has reexamined its
estimate and adjusted its estimates
recognizing that there are multiple wage
categories involved with the labor
hours. Specifically, NHTSA is now
Estimated burden per response
Number of
respondents
Burden per
respondent
(hours)
Total burden
hours
75
20
5 hours ..........
18.75
375
40
1,056
0
0
0
25
110
20
2
10
5 hours ..........
15 minutes .....
240 hours ......
40 hours ........
2 hours ..........
8
3
240
40
2
200
264
4,800
80
20
2,631
110
11.90 hours ...
284.72
31,319
allocating the burden hours across four
labor categories: Architectural and
engineering managers in the motor
vehicle manufacturing industry
(Standard Occupational Classification #
11–9041); engineers (Standard
Occupational Classification # 17–2000);
Computer and Information Systems
Managers (Standard Occupational
Classification # 11–3021); and Lawyers
(Standard Occupational Classification #
23–1000).
To calculate the labor cost associated
with preparing and submitting crash
reports and monthly reports, training,
and setting up new accounts, NHTSA
looked at wage estimates for the type of
personnel involved with these activities.
NHTSA estimates the total labor costs
associated with these burden hours by
looking at the seventy-fifth percentile
wage for architectural and engineering
managers, computer and information
systems managers, and engineers in the
motor vehicle manufacturing industry
and the seventy-fifth percentile wage for
lawyers.11 The Bureau of Labor
Statistics estimates that private industry
workers’’ wages represent 70.4% of total
labor compensation costs.12 Therefore,
NHTSA has weighted the wages
accordingly. Table 2 provides an hourly
labor cost estimate for each labor
category.
TABLE 2—HOURLY LABOR COSTS
Labor category
Wage
Computer and Information System Managers (11–13021) in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Industry (75th
percentile) .............................................................................................................................................................
Architectural and Engineering Managers (11–9041) in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Industry (75th percentile) ..................................................................................................................................................................
Engineers (17–2000) in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Industry (75th percentile) ............................................
Lawyers (23–1011) (75th percentile) .......................................................................................................................
Using the hourly labor cost estimates
above, NHTSA estimates that the total
labor costs associated with the 31,319
hours is $3,290,351.24.
Hourly labor
cost
$89.94
$127.76
77.37
54.32
91.11
109.90
77.16
129.42
Table 3 provides a summary of the
estimated labor costs.
TABLE 2—LABOR COST ESTIMATES
khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with NOTICES
Description of information collection component
Level 2 ADAS one-day reports,
initial.
Level 2 ADAS one-day reports,
update.
Level 2 ADAS five-day reports ....
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for
computer and
information system managers
(11–13021)
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for architectural and
engineering
managers (11–
9041)
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for engineers (17–
2000)
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for
lawyers (23–
1011)
1 hour, $127.76
2 hours,
$219.80.
6 hours,
$659.40.
6 hours,
$659.40.
3 hours,
$231.48.
7 hours,
$540.12.
7 hours,
$540.12.
2 hours,
$258.84.
6 hours,
$776.52.
6 hours,
$776.52.
1 hour, $127.76
1 hour, $127.76
11 See May 2020 National Industry-Specific
Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates,
NAICS 336100—Motor Vehicle Manufacturing,
available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/
naics4_336100.htm#15–0000 (accessed December
VerDate Sep<11>2014
20:20 Dec 28, 2021
Jkt 256001
17, 2021) and May 2020 National Occupational
Employment and Wage Estimates, available at
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
(accessed December 17, 2021).
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Frm 00168
Fmt 4703
Sfmt 4703
Total labor
cost per
response
Total labor
cost
$837.88
$67,030.40
2,103.80
168,304.00
2,103.80
1,935,496.00
12 See Table 1. Employer Costs for Employee
Compensation by ownership (Mar. 2021), available
at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t01.htm
(accessed December 17, 2021).
E:\FR\FM\29DEN1.SGM
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74231
Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 247 / Wednesday, December 29, 2021 / Notices
TABLE 2—LABOR COST ESTIMATES—Continued
Description of information collection component
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for
computer and
information system managers
(11–13021)
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for architectural and
engineering
managers (11–
9041)
ADS one-day reports, initial .........
1 hour, $127.76,
ADS one-day reports, update ......
1 hour, $127.76
ADS five-day reports ....................
1 hour, $127.76
Monthly Report-Initial ADS ..........
1 hour, $127.76
Monthly Report-Level 2 ADAS
Supplemental.
Monthly Report-ADS Supplemental.
Monthly Reports-No Reportable
Information.
Additional Screening ....................
1 hour, $127.76
2 hours,
$219.80.
4 hours,
$439.60.
4 hours,
$439.60.
3 hours,
$329.70.
1 hour, $109.90
1 hour, $127.76
1 hour, $109.90
0 hours, $0 .......
0 hours, $0 .......
12 hours,
$1,533.12.
0 hours, $0 .......
72 hours,
$7,912.80.
40 hours,
$4,396.
0 hours, $0 .......
Training ........................................
Setting Up Account ......................
khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with NOTICES
Total ......................................
2 hours,
$255.52.
...........................
Estimated Total Annual Burden Cost:
$0.
In the 60-day notice, NHTSA stated
that it did not know whether
manufacturers would incur additional
costs, nor did it have a basis for
estimating these costs. In the notice,
NHTSA sought comment on whether
manufacturers will incur any additional
costs associated with complying with
the new reporting requirements, such as
investing in new IT infrastructure. In
response, NHTSA received one
comment from Auto Innovators, which
stated that ‘‘in addition to the cost of
labor associated with the handling of
the crash information, there are also
fiscal burdens associated with the
hardware and software infrastructure to
monitor and manage crash reporting.’’
They further stated that reporting
entities have already invested
significant resources into setting up
internal processes for the handling of
crash information, which often include
IT systems that come at a financial cost.
The comment, however, did not provide
sufficient information for NHTSA to
estimate additional annual costs to
reporting entities. Until NHTSA has
more information on additional costs,
NHTSA continues to estimate that
annual costs to respondents is $0.
Public Comments Invited: You are
asked to comment on any aspects of this
information collection, including (a)
whether the proposed collection of
information is necessary for the proper
VerDate Sep<11>2014
20:20 Dec 28, 2021
Jkt 256001
...........................
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for engineers (17–
2000)
Total hours and
labor cost per
response for
lawyers (23–
1011)
3 hours,
$231.48.
5 hours,
$385.80.
5 hours,
$385.80.
6 hours,
$540.12.
2 hours,
$154.32.
2 hours,
$154.32.
15 minutes,
$19.29.
84 hours,
$6,481.44.
0 hours, $0 .......
2 hours,
$258.84.
4 hours,
$517.68.
4 hours,
$517.68.
3 hours,
$388.26.
1 hour, $129.42
Total labor
cost per
response
Total labor
cost
837.88
25,136.40
1,470.84
44,125.20
1,470.84
176,500.80
1,385.84
277,168.00
521.40
39,105.00
1 hour, $129.42
521.40
20,856.00
0 hours, $0 .......
19.29
20,370.24
72 hours,
$9318.24.
0 hours, $0 .......
25,245.60
504,912.00
4,396
8,792
0 hours, $0 .......
0 hours, $0 .......
255.52
2,555.20
...........................
...........................
........................
$3,290,351.24
performance of the functions of the
Department, including whether the
information will have practical utility;
(b) the accuracy of the Department’s
estimate of the burden of the proposed
information collection; (c) ways to
enhance the quality, utility and clarity
of the information to be collected; and
(d) ways to minimize the burden of the
collection of information on
respondents, including the use of
automated collection techniques or
other forms of information technology.
Authority: The Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1995; 44 U.S.C. Chapter 35, as
amended; 49 CFR 1.49; and DOT Order
1351.29.
Ann E. Carlson,
Chief Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2021–28311 Filed 12–28–21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910–59–P
and made this revision available on its
website, https://home.treasury.gov/
policy-issues/coronavirus/assistancefor-state-local-and-tribal-governments/
coronavirus-relief-fund.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Katharine Richards, Senior Advisor,
Office of Recovery Programs,
Department of the Treasury, (844) 529–
9527.
Treasury
has revised its previously issued CRF
guidance regarding the requirement in
the CARES Act that payments from the
CRF may only be used to cover costs
that were incurred during the period
that begins on March 1, 2020, and ends
on December 31, 2021.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Dated: December 17, 2021.
Jacob Leibenluft,
Chief Recovery Officer, Office of Recovery
Programs, U.S. Department of the Treasury.
[FR Doc. 2021–28267 Filed 12–28–21; 8:45 am]
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
BILLING CODE 4810–AK–P
Coronavirus Relief Fund; Notice of
Availability
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Department of the Treasury.
ACTION: Notification.
AGENCY:
This notification announces
that the U.S. Department of the Treasury
(Treasury) has revised its guidance
regarding the Coronavirus Relief Fund
(CRF) for States, Tribal governments,
and certain eligible local governments
SUMMARY:
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Fmt 4703
Sfmt 4703
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Proposed Collection;
Comment Request; Capital Projects
Fund
Departmental Offices, U.S.
Department of the Treasury.
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:
E:\FR\FM\29DEN1.SGM
29DEN1
| File Type | application/pdf |
| File Modified | 2021-12-29 |
| File Created | 2021-12-29 |