Comment Period Nears End on Proposed Occupant Protection Enhancements

By Ryan Gray

Flanked by Morrisville Elementary School students, Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters announces the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Nov. 19.

It took the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration longer than expected to call for school bus lap/shoulder seat belts, but as many questions as answers, such as where the money will come from, remain.

Contingent on a final rule, the pupil transportation community is one step closer to realizing required usage of the restraint systems on small school buses with a proposed overhaul of several federal motor vehicle safety standards regulating occupant protection, including higher 24-inch seat backs in all buses. As for large school buses, the feds recognized that lap/shoulder belts used in conjunction with compartmentalization “would afford that optimum protection.” But it left the question of whether to equip large school buses with lap/shoulder belts to individual school districts.

Absent from the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued Nov. 19 along with new funding was any mention of bus monitors to supervise students wearing the seat belts or evacuation guidelines in the case of a crash or emergency.

“Is the next step having a monitor on each bus?” asked Wayne Johnston, transportation director for the School District of Springfield Township near Philadelphia. “We can’t get drivers, now we are to double our staff, and at who’s expense? I really am not sure what we are trying to fix here, but I do know we are throwing one heck of a lot of money at it.”

NHTSA also refrained from prohibiting lap belts on large buses. While the two-point restraints perform poorly in severe frontal impacts, it could not “make a determination, based on the results of the limited testing with lap belt restraints in a severe frontal crash condition, that the addition of lap belts in large school buses reduces overall occupant protection.”

“We are disappointed that NHTSA waffled so much on the lap-belt issue,” commented Robin Leeds, an industry specialist with the National School Transportation Association. “I understand that they have limited real-world data on injuries in lap-belt equipped buses, but they certainly danced around their own research in declining to preclude lap belts in the proposed standards.”

NHTSA stopped short of requiring Type C and Type D three-point restraints amid concerns that any resulting reduction in ridership would inevitably lead to more student fatalities in other vehicles. Reduced seating capacity was not found to be a factor in small school buses because they are already configured with seating positions that can accommodate lap/shoulder belts.

With public comments accepted through mid-month, it will remain to be seen what changes, if any, will be made to an NPRM shrouded in controversy.

“I’m back to saying I want to see the statistics where all theses changes are warranted,” said Cheri Clymer, a transportation safety trainer for Thompson School District in Loveland, Colo. “Show me where this will improve school buses by 90 percent.”

What the NPRM Says
The NPRM lays out several additional requirements on seat belt anchorages and seat construction, some of which are already offered in existing products. The mandatory lap/shoulder belts are required at all passenger seating positions of 15 inches in width to fit students 6 years of age through adulthood on all Type A school buses, which NHTSA notes are more prone to rollover during crashes. It addresses the adjustability of belt systems to fit students of all ages and proposes that small bus anchorage strengths meet those of FMVSS 210 regulation on anchorage strength as large buses, and it proposes to amend FMVSS 207 load requirements to include Type As. School bus seat-belt retractors would also have to meet the same requirements as those for passenger vehicles, and torso and lap seat belt anchorages would need to be integrated into the seat structure.

“We have a 45-inch and a 30-inch, three-two seating in New Jersey, so our buses won’t change that much,” said Jerry Ford, the state’s director of pupil transportation. “But there could be a big impact for other states with a possible reduction of capacity.”

If approved, the seat belt requirement would go into affect three years after the implementation date.

Besides the seat belt proposal for small school buses, which have been required to be equipped with two-point lap belts since the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were first implemented in 1977, the NPRM focuses on increasing school bus seat backs to 24 inches from the current height of 20 inches to prevent injuries sustained by students when overriding the seat in front of them during a crash.

NHTSA noted that Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Ohio — and numerous other school districts nationwide — already require the higher seat backs, and that it has received no reports of supervision problems. The high seat-back requirement would go into effect one year after a final rule is published.

Much of the proposed rulemaking deals with the actual construction of seats. The NPRM would amend FMVSS 222 to make the restraining barriers at the front of school buses the same height as the new 24-inch seat backs and incorporate test procedures for Type A lap/shoulder belts as well as for voluntarily installed three-point restraints in larger buses “to ensure both the strength of the anchorages and the compatibility of the seat with compartmentalization,” and a self-latching mechanism for all school bus seat bottom cushions at the bight designed to flip up for easy maintenance.

Then there’s that issue of funding.

“I just don’t know how school districts will be able to afford it, I just really don’t,” added Clymer.

Determining the Cost of Improving Compartmentalization
The NHTSA proposal pointed to existing federal 402 funds as a possible vehicle for school districts to use when purchasing more expensive school buses, but small school buses are not eligible because the lap/shoulder belts are “required safety equipment and therefore an integral part of the vehicle itself. NHTSA also estimates the increased cost of installing higher seat backs and lap/shoulder belts in small buses to be $1,165 to $2,481 per bus, and large school buses will have increased costs from higher seat backs of backs of $125 per bus.

It remained unclear how viable an alternative this would be in light of other state agencies vying for the same funds. Local governments could see an increase in their costs by $5,484 to $7,345 per large bus if they also voluntarily added lap/shoulder seat belts. It remained unclear how viable an alternative this would be in light of other state agencies vying for the same funds.

“I have serious doubts that states will be any more eager to use their 402 funds for school bus safety now than they have been in the past. The only way to really push the issue is for Congress to approve a set-aside of 402 funds specifically for school bus safety as they did in the early 1990s,” added NSTA’s Leeds, referring to the 1990 transportation reauthorization that took into account the 1989 Transportation Research Board Special Report 222 on Improving School Bus Safety. “That, coupled with a tax incentive for the purchase of lap/shoulder-belt equipped buses, would spur fleet upgrades.”

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association asked Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters to call on Congress to include additional funds in the new transportation reauthorization bill, which will replace the current SAFETEA-LU legislation set to expire on Sept. 30, 2009. The Bush administration is scheduled to submit its funding proposal this spring.

But Barbara Harsha, executive director of GHSA, warned it is unlikely either the current or new administration would fund school bus safety, which she added is not a national priority.

“This is going to be a very, very difficult reauthorization,” said Harsha. “The highway trust fund is projected to become insolvent in 2009. The speculation around town is that Congress won’t be able to complete its work by the fall, and it may take several years. It’s going to be a long protracted battle.”

If a final rule is passed, it appears many states would need to get creative. Dick Fischer, a former California school district transportation director and currently a consultant, suggested states add a $5 surcharge to motor vehicle violations.

“It’s going to be up to the states to do something and not the federal government,” he said. “That’s where the money will come from.”