New regs for Thursday: Changing tables, recovery planning, immobilizers

Thursday’s edition of the Federal Register contains new safety standards from the Consumer Product Safety Commission for baby changing tables, enforceable guidance from the Treasury Department banks when planning for recovery and a rule from the Department of Transportation to exempt vehicles with ant-theft immobilizers from having to meet vehicle theft standards.

Here’s what to look for.

Changing tables: The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is proposing new safety standards for baby changing tables.

The proposed rule calls for more stringent requirements for structural integrity, restraint system integrity and warnings on labels and in instructional literature

CPSC defines changing table in the proposed rule as elevated, freestanding structures designed to support and retain a 30-pound child while a diaper is being changed.

The commission said five children died from 2005 to 2015 in accidents involving changing tables, but that all the incidents involved caregivers using the table as a bed.

The public will have 75 days to comment on the rule.

Recovery planning: The Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) will finalize enforceable guidelines requiring insured banks, federal savings associations and insured federal branches of foreign banks with average total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more to follow certain standards when it comes to recovery planning.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the OCC said it became clear that many financial institutions had insufficient plans for identifying and responding rapidly to significant stress events that affected their financial condition and threatened their viability.

“As a result, many institutions were forced to take significant actions quickly without the benefit of a well-developed plan,” OCC said in its rulemaking.

The rule takes effect January 1, 2017.

Vehicle theft: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is finalizing a rule to exempt manufacturers from having to meet vehicle theft prevention standards if the vehicle is equipped with an immobilizer type anti-theft device.

An immobilizer anti-theft device combines microchip and transponder technology with engine and fuel immobilizer components that can prevent vehicles from starting unless a verified code is received by the transponder.

The rule will take effect in 6 0days.