Appendix II: List of Test Vehicles for MY2001 Rollover Resistance Ratings

NHTSA expects to measure the Static Stability Factor and provide rollover resistance ratings for each of the following model year 2001 vehicles. For pickups and SUVs, the agency plans to measure and report separately on both two-wheel-drive and four- or all-wheel-drive variants of each model, where applicable. In no case will a two-wheel-drive measurement be applied to a four- or all-wheel-drive variant, or vice versa. The agency may need to make substitutions for some of the models listed depending on availability. The list is arranged largely alphabetically within each vehicle category, and passenger cars are sorted by class according to the classifications used in the NHTSA NCAP frontal and side crash test programs. The order in which vehicles will be tested will be determined by the test laboratory and will depend primarily on model availability.

The following class abbreviations are used:

LPC = light passenger car

CPC = compact passenger car

MPC = medium passenger car

HPC = heavy passenger car

SUV = sport utility vehicle

LT = light truck

1. 65 FR 34999 (June 1, 2000)

2. Light trucks include vans, minivans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and pickup trucks under 4,536 kilograms (10,000 pounds) gross vehicle weight rating.

3. A broken hip is an example of an AIS 3 injury.

4. In 1973, NHTSA published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Rollover Prevention (38 FR 9598, April 18, 1973). The comments cited here can be found in NHTSA Docket No. 73-10; Notice 1, comments 11 (MVMA) and 14 (GM).

5. Untripped rollover is a rollover induced by tire friction with the driving surface alone, resulting from a driving maneuver and usually occurring on the roadway. Tripped rollovers usually occur when a vehicle runs off the roadway and the tires and wheels contact a tripping mechanism (curb, soft soil, pavement drop off) which causes the vehicle to roll. A much smaller number of tripped rollovers occur on the road as a result of the wheel rim digging into the pavement during an extreme maneuver. Whether or not a vehicle rolls when it encounters a tripping mechanism is highly dependent on the geometric properties represented by SSF. In an untripped rollover, SSF is still very important, but other factors come in to play (such as tire properties). Therefore, GM's suggestion to use SSF to characterize a vehicle's tendency for untripped rollover was a very strong endorsement of the relationship between SSF and vehicle rollover.

6. In 1998, the agency was performing research on driving maneuvers to see if we could develop a way to ameliorate the incidence of onroad, untripped rollover, which we estimated at the time to be less than 10 percent of rollover crashes. The American Automobile Manufacturers Association (one of the predecessors of the Alliance) contracted with Calspan Corporation to review all the cases in NHTSA's Crashworthiness Data System coded as untripped to try to demonstrate that we were misplacing our research funds on a very small problem. Consequently our National Automotive Sampling System team did its own audit of the 1992-96 rollover data and concluded that some tripped rollovers were miscoded as untripped rollovers (typically these were onroad rollovers in which the vehicle was sliding sideways and tripped on its own wheel rim). Using corrected 1992-96 data, our National Center for Statistics and Analysis estimated that 3.7 percent of rollovers are untripped and 3.5 percent are both untripped and onroad, while 4.4 percent of single-vehicle rollovers are untripped. (Research Note, "Passenger Vehicles in Untripped Rollovers," September 1999.)

7. See the June 1, 2000 Request for Comments for a summary of that research.

8. Mitsubishi Montero redesign from model year (MY) 1991-99 design to MY 2000 version of the same nameplate.

9. Isuzu Rodeo

10. These metrics are explained in detail in the June 1, 2000 notice.

11. Heydinger, G.J., et al; "Measured Vehicle Inertial Parameters - NHTSA's Data through November 1998"; Society of Automotive Engineers 1999-01-1336; March, 1999.

12. Heydinger, G.J., et al; "The Design of a Vehicle Inertia Measurement Facility"; SAE Paper 950309; February 1995.

13. Bixel, R.A., et al; "Developments in Vehicle Center of Gravity and Inertial Parameter Estimation and Measurement"; SAE Paper 950356; February 1995.

14. Heydinger, G.J., et al; "An Overview of a Vehicle Inertia Measurement Facility"; Intl. Symposium on Automotive Technology; Paper 94SF034; October 1994.

15. P.L. 106-414, November 1, 2000.

16. Denial of the Wirth petition, 52 FR 49033 (December 29, 1987).

17. Termination to establish a minimum vehicle standard for rollover resistance based on TTR or CSV, 59 FR 33254 (June 28, 1994).

18. P.L. 106-346, October 23, 2000.

19. The manufacturer pays for the vehicle and the test; however, actual vehicle leasing and testing is done by a testing laboratory under contract to NHTSA.