**Remarks of**

**Administrator Jeffrey W. Runge, M.D.**

# Japan Automobile Standards Internationalization Center (JASIC) Invitational Workshop

**September 17, 2002**

**Tokyo, Japan**

I would like to begin by congratulating JASIC on this annual workshop
and on their overall efforts to work with governments, industry and
other interested parties to promote global harmonization of motor
vehicle safety and environmental regulations. Thank you for bringing me
to Tokyo.

At the Safety Symposium early this afternoon, I outlined my highest
priorities for motor vehicle safety in the United States and asked
government and industry to join us in moving these initiatives forward.
We need to work together because we are all affected by the rapid
changes we are experiencing in our societies. We live in a global
community that is becoming more and more interconnected and
interdependent, a global community that is witnessing an explosion of
technological advances and innovations. Global mergers and global
markets are creating the need for nations and companies to work more
closely together.

The challenge for regulators is to find ways of keeping pace with these
changes without impeding progress. The process of harmonization can be
one way of doing this. As one country or region finds creative
regulatory approaches to particular safety problems, other countries and
regions can adopt those new best practices through harmonizing their
standards. This makes it possible also to achieve safety improvements
while reducing the costs of doing so.

Over the past several years, the governments of the EU, Japan, the U.S.,
along with other countries, have worked long and hard collectively to
provide strong leadership in the area of international harmonization. We
all want "best practices" for our countries and we would like them, to
the extent possible, harmonized with the rest of the world. The 1998
Global Agreement and the International Harmonized Research Activities
(IHRA) provide opportunities to do just that. Much progress has been
made under both. The 1998 Global Agreement has 21 Contracting
Parties\-\-- a tremendous accomplishment for a 4-year old Agreement.

The full potentials of the IHRA and the 1998 Agreement are yet to be
realized in terms of benefits to governments, manufacturers and
consumers, but their provisions are clear in their intent:

---To enhance worldwide governmental awareness of and interest in
opportunities for improving vehicle safety and environmental protection;

---To promote adoption of effective global technical regulations by
calling for those regulations to be based on analyses of scientific
data;

---To ensure transparency and opportunities for participation for
industry and public in developing and establishing global technical
regulations;

---To preserve each Contracting Party's sovereignty and regulatory
discretion to address particular local safety and environmental
problems;

---To seek to minimize costs of new regulations to manufacturers and
consumers; and

---To seek to leverage the limited resources that governments have
through the implementation of coordinated research and testing.

My agency is committed to making the most of these opportunities under
both the IHRA and the 1998 Global Agreement.

\--We are fully committed to continuing the activities of the IHRA in
order to coordinate research activities and thus reduce divergence in
the resulting regulations.

\--We are also fully committed to implementing the 1998 Agreement work
program that has been recently adopted by WP.29. We will take the lead
in several areas, including door locks and door retention components,
child restraints, and head restraints. We will also be fully engaged in
the exchange of views in the area of vehicle compatibility and side
impact protection. We will work diligently to get the first regulations
in the Registry of Global Technical Regulations within the next few
years.

\--This must be done according to NHTSA's policy on public
participation. We need to ensure that the manufacturers and the public
are given the opportunity to comment to us on the proposals and
recommendations for establishing such global technical regulations.

In addition to the subjects in the work program, we will continue to
review other countries' regulations and research and seriously consider
harmonizing them, as often as we can as we make our nation's rules and
regulations. This has been and will continue to be a NHTSA policy within
our domestic rulemaking process. We will strengthen our opportunity to
learn about other countries regulations by instituting bilateral
cooperative arrangements, such as we did this morning with our
colleagues at MLIT.

"Beginning is easy---To stay on course in more difficult." Many
challenges lie ahead of us in harmonization. Harmonization is not simply
adopting existing regulations of the United Nations' Economic Commission
for Europe. It requires all of us to work together to change our
existing standards to reflect best practices. However, doing everything
that needs to be done under both the 1998 Agreement and the IHRA will
require substantial resources of money and time that are currently not
available. That is a problem many of us share. We must set priorities
and make choices about what to do first. Our choices will often reflect
our particular safety needs, political situations and statutory schemes.
This poses a challenge for harmonization, as we must all continue to
meet our obligations under our respective laws.

"Harmonization" is very difficult to define and we all have our own
understanding of and approach to the concept.

For example, under the European Common Market approach, it may be
vitally important to reach consensus on not only the same regulatory
approach and ultimate vehicle design goals, but also exactly the same
regulatory text, word-for-word, and methods of certification and
approvals. This is important for the purpose of type-approving vehicles
and mutually recognizing approvals among European countries. That is
understandable and it is attainable among countries with similar
regulatory, certification and regulatory systems.

During the last few years, I understand that Japan amended its laws to
allow it to adopt the European Commission for Europe's regulations, if
they are deemed appropriate for Japan, and to accept European countries'
approvals for those regulations.

In the U.S., given our statutory requirements and the type of
certification and enforcement systems under which we are required to
operate, following the example of the EU and Japan is more difficult.

Harmonization as we see it is looking for opportunities to reach
agreement, to the extent possible, on the general regulatory approaches
in specifying performance requirements, test devices and test
procedures, and considering their adoption as appropriate under our
statutes. Reaching agreements in Geneva does not alter our obligation
under laws made by our Congress.

> \-- Each performance specification and test procedure in our domestic
> regulations is required by statute to be based on a safety need, be
> performance-oriented, be stated in objective terms, so that compliance
> can be determined through scientific measurement instead of subjective
> human judgment, and be practicable both technologically and
> economically.

Adherence to these requirements gives the manufacturers the flexibility
in choosing means of compliance and gives the agency objective means to
distinguish with certainty between complying and non-complying products.

Our efforts toward harmonization also do not diminish the need to meet
our requirements to seek public input on proposed regulations.
Publishing notices, seeking and considering comments from all interested
parties and giving them full consideration is an important part of our
process of protecting the public and the industry. This public
interaction often informs the agency on new technologies or issues that
it has not considered or been aware.

In some instances, we may be able to meet our legal obligations with
minor departures from the exact text of global technical regulations. In
many other instances, we cannot. However, language differences do not
necessarily preclude manufacturers from using the same design solutions
for meeting both the U.S. regulations and the global technical
regulations. There will also be instances in which the safety and
environmental needs on American roads will require the adoption of
requirements and test procedures that make it necessary for
manufacturers to use different design solutions.

Regardless, we expect that, as a result of the 1998 Agreement
activities, regulations from around the world will be much more similar
than they would have been without the efforts. This will greatly
simplify the designing of motor vehicles and the introducing of new
technologies without compromising safety and environmental protection.

The 1998 Agreement and the IHRA processes established by Japan, Europe,
the U.S. and others are well thought out. The negotiators worked long
and hard to develop processes that are consistent with the different
regulatory schemes that exist around the world. As we gain experience
with these processes, it will become easier to address all the potential
obstacles.

As we proceed with the implementation of these processes, I would like
to emphasize that governments cannot and should not be expected to do it
alone. It is true that regulatory agencies have historically had
primarily a domestic outlook and must respond to the global market by
finding effective ways of cooperating and coordinating. However, the
implementation of the processes must be a shared responsibility among
all interested parties.

> \-- Industry understands very well the regulatory systems of world
> economies because it operates in a world economy.
>
> \-- Industry is in the best position to demonstrate which
> non-harmonized technical requirements impose unnecessary burdens and
> costs
>
> \-- Industry is also in the best position to provide the required
> technical justification for changing any existing burdensome
> requirements that have no bearing on safety.

I call on the industry to come together and fully participate, not
simply by making recommendations for results, but by providing technical
solutions and justifications that are consistent with all regulatory
systems.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the importance of continuing to
work closely together to give the harmonization processes a chance to
mature and succeed. I challenge all of us to be visionary, but also to
be patient and creative in finding solutions. International
harmonization is a long, and often challenging road. However, "No road
is too long in the company of a friend." We look forward to a fruitful
outcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

.