27. The expert from EC, secretary of the informal working group on Quiet Road Transport Vehicles (QRTV), introduced the status report of the second meeting of QRTV (GRB-57-29) and announced that the Notice of Proposed of Rulemaking (NPRM) of the United States of America (US) on minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles was published on 9 January 2013, including a draft environmental assessment study. He informed GRB that the next meeting of QRTV would be held from 16 to 18 April 2013 in Brussels. He also introduced GRB-57-15 to propose the development of a “sound emission profiling test” for QRTV to match safety and environmental needs and support the positive impact on traffic noise introduced by the deployment of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). He invited GRB experts to assess the feasibility of this proposal in which the main objective would be the profiling of vehicle noise up to a speed of 30 km/h.

28. The Chair of GRB underlined the opportunity given by the publication of the NPRM to provide the US authorities with comments by GRB. The expert from the Netherlands expressed concerns on how the audible vehicle alerting system (AVAS) installed on QRTV could negatively affect the environment. He also expressed concerns on how the installation of such devices would probably shift the responsibility of the driver to vulnerable road users such as visually impaired people. As a general comment to the NPRM, GRB agreed that the development of the UN Global Technical Regulation on QRTV (that would also be based on the NPRM and on ECE/TRANS/WP.29/GRB/2012/6), should be environmentally friendly and coherent with vehicle noise levels worldwide including ASEP provisions. Finally, the Chair of GRB invited all experts to provide comments on the NPRM directly to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). GRB agreed to resume discussion at its September 2013 session on the basis of the outcome of the informal working group.