You can respond pretty much with anything that accurately answers the questions. If they want more detail, they can then ask for it.

I don't get where this strange idea that if he doesn't provide 100k pages, he's going to be subject to a fine immediately comes from. It's 100% completely and totally wrong.

If he literally answers the questions, he's fine. If they want more detail, they can ask for it.

The letter is not designed to kill the company, and the people who think so have probably never dealt with any regulatory agency.

My source on this, btw, is that i've dealt with many regulatory agencies many times.

They aren't psychos, even when they are adversarial.

To give you an example, when involved in a pretty adversarial issue with the DOJ, i cannot say they were anything but professional.

When the DOJ wanted more info on something we said "hey, can we just sit down for an hour and chat", and they'll usually say "great, let's do it", and then maybe they'll say a few weeks later "hey, thanks for doing that, we have some more questions about x, can we set up another hour" and so on. Are they always like this? No. (am i the most experienced person in the world? also no, it's also not what i do anymore at all, but this was my experience with pretty much every agency, every time)

But the vast majority of the time, they literally are just trying to gather info to decide what to do.

It's only when they are trying to actually get a particular result that things change. But you'll pretty much know when that happens, and this ain't it.

The only agency i've ever seen just be outright hostile is the CPSC.

The NHSTA, in my experience, is pretty much one of the most level headed and professional agencies you will find.

If you have actual evidence to the contrary, where they have "shut a company down", i'd love to see it.