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NTSB REPORT OF SEPTEMBER 21, 1999NATIONAL
TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is an abstract from the Safety Board's report and does not include the Board's rationale for the safety recommendations. Safety Board staff are currently making final revisions to the report from which the attached information has been extracted. The final report and pertinent safety recommendation letters will be distributed to recommendation recipients and investigation parties as soon as possible. The following information is subject to further review and editing. INTRODUCTION School bus and motorcoach travel are two of the safest forms of transportation in the United States. Each year, on average, only nine school bus passengers and four motorcoach passengers are fatally injured in bus crashes. In comparison, last year over 42,000 passenger car and truck occupants were fatally injured in highway crashes. Although much has been done to improve the safety of school buses and motorcoaches over the years, the safe transportation of bus passengers, especially students and senior citizens, continues to be a national safety priority. Children and seniors are predicted to be the fastest growing segments of our society, and these groups are the primary users of bus transportation. Therefore, the National Transportation Safety Board initiated this special investigation to determine whether additional measures should be taken to better protect bus occupants. To address crucial safety questions on bus safety, this special investigation examines school bus and motorcoach crashworthiness issues through the analysis of 6 school bus and 40 motorcoach accidents, and through information gathered at the Safety Board's August 12, 1998, public hearing. The Board's report also evaluates the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) that govern the design of school buses and motorcoaches to determine the effectiveness of these standards and to determine whether further occupant protection measures are needed. Also included here are the results of computer simulations performed to evaluate the safety levels afforded by passenger crash protection systems not currently required for school buses. Further, the report reviews international perspectives on, and developments in, motorcoach occupant protection. Finally, the report addresses data collection issues that are hampering effective accident study. During the Safety Board's discussion of bus crashworthiness issues, this special investigation identifies the following safety issues:
As a result of this special investigation, the Safety Board makes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Association of Governors' Highway Safety Representatives, and the bus manufacturers. CONCLUSIONS 1. In the accidents analyzed for this special investigation, school bus passengers who remained within the seating compartment but not within the intrusion area during the accident sequence were less likely to have been seriously injured than passengers who were out of the compartment before the collision or who were propelled from the compartment during the collision. 2. Because of compartmentalization, school bus passengers are safer now than they were before 1977. 3. Current compartmentalization is incomplete in that it does not protect school bus passengers during lateral impacts with vehicles of large mass and in rollovers, because in such accidents, passengers do not always remain completely within the seating compartment. 4. All potential designs for occupant protection systems to be used on school buses should be tested to uniform performance standards developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to ensure occupant safety. 5. It cannot be determined whether the current design of available restraint systems for large school buses would have reduced the risk of injury to the school bus passengers in the accidents simulated for this special investigation. 6. The potential exists for an occupant crash protection system to be developed that would protect school bus passengers in most accident scenarios. 7. One of the primary causes of preventable injury in motorcoach accidents involving a rollover, ejection, or both is occupant motion out of the seat during a collision when no intrusion occurs into the seating area. 8. The overall injury risk to occupants in motorcoach accidents involving rollover and ejection may be reduced significantly by retaining the occupant in the seating compartment throughout the collision. 9. New occupant crash protection systems for motorcoaches should be tested to uniform performance standards developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that are based upon actual crash testing of motorcoaches to ensure occupant safety. 10. Equipping motorcoach side windows with advanced glazing may decrease the number of ejections of unrestrained passengers during motorcoach accidents and decrease the risk of serious injuries to restrained passengers during motorcoach accidents. 11. Because the increased size of passenger windows in motorcoaches may affect roof strength, rollover strength standards must be developed to take into account the effect of typical window dimensions. 12. The Department of Transportation does not have standard definitions or classifications for the various bus types. 13. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is not a reliable source for identifying the number of fatal occupant ejections in motorcoaches. 14. The incorporation of bus identification into the vehicle identification number and the expansion of the use category will correct some of the inaccuracies in FARS data, but without standard definitions and accurate classification of buses within FARS, incomplete data and inaccuracies will still exist. 15. The Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria do not provide specific enough guidance to the States on bus body type coding. 16. School bus accident injury data are incomplete, and, therefore, injuries cannot be reliably estimated. 17. The use of on-board recorders may help reduce the accident rates of vehicle fleets. 18. On-board recorders are needed to provide quantitative data to evaluate the dynamics of bus crashes. 19. Establishing on-board recording standards for highway vehicles will provide a necessary foundation for the future use of on-board recorders. SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS to the Department of Transportation 1. In 1 year and in cooperation with the bus manufacturers, complete the development of standard definitions and classifications for each of the different bus body types, and include these definitions and classifications in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. 2. Once the standard definitions and classifications for each of the different bus types have been established in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, in cooperation with the National Association of Governors' Highway Safety Representatives, amend the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria's bus configuration coding to incorporate the FMVSS definitions and standards. to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 3. In 2 years, develop performance standards for school bus occupant protection systems that account for frontal impact collisions, side impact collisions, rear impact collisions, and rollovers. 4. Once pertinent standards have been developed for school bus occupant protection systems, require newly manufactured large school buses to have an occupant crash protection system that meets the newly developed performance standards and retains passengers, including those in child restraint systems, within the seating compartment throughout the accident sequence for all accident scenarios. 5. In 2 years, develop performance standards for motorcoach occupant protection systems that account for frontal impact collisions, side impact collisions, rear impact collisions, and rollovers. 6. Once pertinent standards have been developed for motorcoach occupant protection systems, require newly manufactured motorcoaches to have an occupant crash protection system that meets the newly developed performance standards and retains passengers, including those in child restraint systems, within the seating compartment throughout the accident sequence for all accident scenarios. 7. Expand your research on current advanced glazing to include its applicability to motorcoach occupant ejection prevention, and revise window glazing requirements for newly manufactured motorcoaches based on the results of this research. 8. In 2 years, develop performance standards for motorcoach roof strength that provide maximum survival space for all seating positions and that take into account current typical motorcoach window dimensions. 9. Once performance standards have been developed for motorcoach roof strength, require newly manufactured motorcoaches to meet those standards. 10. Modify your methodology to collect accurate, timely, and sufficient data on passenger injuries resulting from school bus accidents so that thorough assessments can be made relating to school bus safety. 11. Require that all school buses and motorcoaches manufactured after January 1, 2003, be equipped with on-board recording systems that record vehicle parameters, including, at a minimum, crash pulses for determining bus body motion. (Additional recorder parameters will be added. The additional language will be presented to the Board for approval at a later date.) 12. Develop and implement, in cooperation with other Government agencies and industry, standards for on-board recording of bus crash data that address, at a minimum, parameters to be recorded, data sampling rates, duration of recording, interface configurations, data storage format, incorporation of fleet management tools, fluid immersion survivability, impact shock survivability, crush and penetration survivability, fire survivability, independent power supply, and ability to accommodate future requirements and technological advances. to the National Association of Governors' Highway Safety Representatives 13. In conjunction with the Department of Transportation, amend the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria's bus configuration coding to comply with standard definitions and classifications of buses. to the bus manufacturers 14. Cooperate with the Department of Transportation in the development of standard definitions and classifications for each of the different bus body types.
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