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LAP-SHOULDER BELT STANDARDS FOR SMALL SCHOOL BUSES LEAD TO RENEWED DEBATE ON GROSS VEHICLE WEIGHT RATING


WRITTEN BY JULIE METEA


£Ford's E-350 cutaway chassis DRW for Type A-2 school bus bodies.


£ GM continues to offer a cutaway-van chassis at 10,000 pounds and less GVWR for Type A-1 buses, but it recently introduced its 10,100-pound GVWR 139-inch, SRW Chevrolet Express Van cutaway.


N


ext month, the industry will have operated for a year and a half under NHTSA’s revised FMVSS 222. Tis


is just long enough for the industry to praise the rule, which mandates lap-shoulder belt restraints on new small buses that weigh 10,000 pounds and less gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR), or to question it even more. NHTSA sets safety standards and


compliance under the assumption that bus manufacturers have been designing their buses to meet the specifications of the final rule, which focuses on improv- ing the crashworthiness and making school travel safer for children. By providing design parameters and testing standards for belted seating, some in the industry said the agency also established an ongoing requirement for true com- partmentalization. NHTSA uses 10,000 pounds and less GVWR as the delineation between a "small" and a "large" school bus. But the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures recog- nizes "Type A" weight limits of up to 14,500 pounds GVWR. Several commenters including NAPT, NAS- DPTS and NSTA asked NHTSA to


54 School Transportation News March 2013


reclassify all Type A buses to this higher GVWR, but NHTSA responded that such a move was "beyond the scope" of the NPRM and that the weight limit increase was "not trivial." School bus builders and purchasers


can choose from a variety of cutaway chassis configurations above the pivotal 10,000-pound or less GVWR require- ment of FMVSS 222 (Type A-2), but only one below it (Type A-1). Te current entry weight for Ford’s E-Series commercial cutaway is 10,050 pounds GVWR. Production of the E-Series passenger and cargo vans will run through the 2014 model year and will be replaced by the 10,000 pound and less GVWR Transit commercial van. But currently, only GM offers an


outsourced chassis cutaway (9,900 pounds GVWR) for Type A-1 school buses, along with a the weightier 12,300- and 14,200-pound GVWR platforms on Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana cutaways. For the 2013 model year, GM also added a 10,100-pound GVWR cutaway to meet industry demand for a larger chassis, said Susan Jagoda, account manager of national bus and ambulance specialty vehicles at GM Fleet and Commercial.


Is the school-bus industry opening itself up for a black eye as a result? "Yes," said James Johnson, vice president of marketing and business development for school bus seating manufacture IMMI. “Some end users are exploiting that loophole by buying the over 10,000-pound SRWs with only lap belts, or possibly with no belts,” he added. “Tis circumvents NHSTA’s goal of improving safety in the SRW vehicle and could lead to injuries or even fatalities of children.” Johnson said all research conducted


by NHTSA, and confirmed by IMMI barrier-crash and sled tests, clearly show children are safer when wearing a lap-shoulder belt restraint system in the event of a frontal collision or rollover no matter the GVWR. “Anyone purchasing 10,050 SRW should be specifying a lap-shoulder belt seat to comply with the spirit of the new regulation,” said Johnson. Some have suggested the addition of


three-point seat belts adds to the price of a small school bus, creating a tipping point for purchasers to migrate to larger school buses that aren’t required to be equipped with the restraint systems. Others point to a long-term trend of lowering prices since the introduction of


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