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Unit: $U62

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GEIER v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

Opinion of the Court

to add new requirements, test procedures, and injury criteria
to ensure that “future air bags be designed to create less
risk of serious airbag-induced injuries than current air bags,
particularly for small women and young children”); U. S.
Dept. of Transportation, National Highway Trafﬁc Safety
Administration, National Accident Sampling System Crash-
worthiness Data System 1991–1993, p. viii (Aug. 1995) (ﬁnd-
ing that airbags caused approximately 54,000 injuries be-
tween 1991 and 1993).

Sixth, airbags were expected to be signiﬁcantly more
expensive than other passive restraint devices, raising the
average cost of a vehicle price $320 for full frontal airbags
over the cost of a car with manual lap and shoulder seatbelts
(and potentially much more if production volumes were low).
49 Fed. Reg. 28990 (1984). And the agency worried that the
high replacement cost—estimated to be $800—could lead car
Id., at
owners to refuse to replace them after deployment.
28990, 29000–29001; see also id., at 28990 (estimating total
investment costs for mandatory airbag requirement at $1.3
billion compared to $500 million for automatic seatbelts).
Seventh, the public, for reasons of cost, fear, or physical in-
trusiveness, might resist installation or use of any of the
then-available passive restraint devices,
id., at 28987–
28989—a particular concern with respect to airbags, id., at
29001 (noting that “[a]irbags engendered the largest quantity
of, and most vociferously worded, comments”).

FMVSS 208 reﬂected these considerations in several ways.
Most importantly, that standard deliberately sought vari-
ety—a mix of several different passive restraint systems.
It did so by setting a performance requirement for passive
restraint devices and allowing manufacturers to choose
among different passive restraint mechanisms, such as air-
bags, automatic belts, or other passive restraint technologies
to satisfy that requirement.
Id., at 28996. And DOT ex-
plained why FMVSS 208 sought the mix of devices that
Id., at
it expected its performance standard to produce.