186. The Secretary of GRSP updated AC.3 on the group’s discussions related to side impact dummies. He reminded AC.3 that the chairmanship of the IWG on Harmonization of Side Impact Dummies was vacant, that the representative of United States of America National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) – the previous Chair – had withdrawn due to resource issues in his country. He further underlined that Technical Services lacked the technical specifications and drawings of side impact dummies, which led to inconsistencies in the test results. Further difficulties, he stressed, had stemmed from legal uncertainties since the standards used for dummies in UN GTR No. 14 and UN Regulation 135 are linked to ISO standards that are copyright protected.

187. The representative from OICA thanked the Secretary of GRSP for his summary of the challenges of the test tools (dummies) in UN GTR No. 14 and UN Regulation 135: the technical characteristics of the test tools are not official. He reiterated that the situation caused legal uncertainty for stakeholders and stressed that a solution was needed.

188. The representative from Germany underlined the concerns expressed by the previous speakers and stressed that these challenges apply to all the types of dummies indicated as test tools under UN GTRs and UN Regulations. As intellectual property rights are held by dummy manufacturers, they have not been introduced into M.R.1. He emphasized that this was a challenge for WP.29, but that good experience was made during the work of the GTR No. 9 on Phase 2 with the FlexPLI where the dummy manufacturer provided the set of drawings for the test tool and agreed to have the disclaimer on intellectual property rights removed from the drawings, which was done after the positive vote on the Phase 2 amendment in AC.3.

189. The representative of the United Kingdom urged WP.29 to level cooperation and discussions with test tool manufacturers for securing the release of intellectual property rights, and to allow for the inclusion of test tools in M.R.1 without copyright infringements.

190. The Chair of AC.3 stressed that, in order to achieve legal certainty, it would be necessary to include the test tools and their specifications in a common standardized depository, within M.R.1, for the benefit of both the type approval and self-certification systems. He recommended that GRSP and other concerned subsidiary bodies of WP.29 consider pathways to proceed with this subject at its next sessions, urging contracting parties to, update GRSP on their available resources to address this matter. Among the possible pathways, he recalled that, e.g. IWGs on UN GTR No. 9 and on Phase 2 of UN GTR No. 7 had delivered or would deliver amendments to the M.R.1 including the specifications of their pertaining dummies without the support of a dedicated IWG on tool specifications. Nevertheless, he reiterated his encouragements to contracting parties, especially Canada, to report at the December 2019 session of GRSP on the availability of resources to steer a dedicated IWG on test tools and dummies. He also recommended that a regular discussion on the progress in the IWGs that address different test tools and their inclusion in M.R.1, at future AC.3 sessions.