Interpretation ID: nht78-1.42

DATE: 01/27/78

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Joan Claybrook; NHTSA

TO: Winsconsin School Bus Association

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This responds to your October 16, 1977, letter requesting again that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reinterpret its 20-inch measurement of occupant seat spacing in Standard No. 222, School Bus Passenger Seating and Crash Protection.

Mr. Levin indicated in an earlier response to your letter that seat spacing is measured at the point of greatest distance separating the seats. This measurement is used to ensure that impact forces do not exceed the forces the seat is designed to sustain or absorb. To measure as you suggest would require redesigning school bus seats to ensure their ability to sustain or absorb increased impact loads.

The NHTSA has received a number of complaints on seat spacing in school buses manufactured in compliance with the subject regulations. We have met with most of the major school bus manufacturers discussing production seat spacings and the Federal requirements. The agency has found that manufacturers are producing buses with seat spacings which are, in some cases, 3 inches less than the maximum specified by the regulations. These large reductions in seat spacing result principally from manufacturers' choices in designing the seats. Such seat spacing reductions are not found in all seats designed to meet the regulations.

Through its monitoring of the standard's implementation, the NHTSA has discovered that manufacturers are not achieving the maximum seat spacing that the agency had contemplated at the maximum seat spacing that the agency had contemplated at the time the regulation was issued. The installation of seats in school buses cannot be done with the precision that the NHTSA had anticipated. Accordingly, manufacturers in their attempts to ensure they do not violate the 20-inch space requirement must design seat spacing as much as an inch short of the 20-inch spacing allowance. The result is seat spacing which is less than the agency contemplated. The NHTSA has taken expeditious action to alleviate this problem.

On December 20, 1977, NHTSA issued an Interim Final Rule amending Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 222 by increasing the maximum allowable distance from the seating reference point to the seat back from 20 to 21 inches. The agency intended that the measurement be approximately 20 inches. A seat spacing specification of 21 inches permits 20-inch spacing by taking manufacturing tolerances into account. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposing this change in the rule was also issued on December 20, 1977.

SINCERELY,

Wisconsin SCHOOL BUS Association

October 16, 1977 Administrator Joan Claybrook Nat'l Hwy. Traffic safety Adm. 400 7th St. S.W.

REFERENCE: NOA-30

Dear Ms. Claybrook:

We are in receipt of a letter from NHTSA Chief Counsel Joseph J. Levin Jr., in response to our request for an interpretation of Standard No. 222, School Bus Passenger Seating and Crash Protection.

In his letter of October 7, 1977, Mr. Levin advises us of a similar request for an interpretation on the measurement of school bus seat spacing by Gillig Bros., Hayward, California, (manufacturers of school buses) on September 13, 1976. Gillig Bros. were informed that, according to an interpretation of Standard No. 222 by the NHTSA, the measurement of seat spacing must be made from the seating reference point to the surface of the seat back - exclusive of portions which protrude from the basic contour of the surface.

We would suggest that this query by Gillig Bros. to the NHTSA was a very typical request by a manufacturer wishing to receive a clarification on a specification or regulation. We are not aware that manufacturers, users of school buses, or the NHTSA envisioned, at that time in 1976, that a very serious problem in seat spacing would be created by the performance standards of Standard 222 which control seat design . . . . and in that light suggest the possibility that the NHTSA responded to the 1976 Gillig Bros. query with a clarification of the measurement for seat spacing, rather than a formal interpretation on the subject.

In this intervening period since September of 1976, seat designs have been established, conforming to the criteria of Standard No. 222. School buses, built to the federal construction standards effective April 1, 1977, began to appear in the marketplace.

Prospective purchasers throught the Nation were appalled by the restricted knee-room available to the seated passengers. Widespread opposition to this restricted seat spacing has mounted rapidly as more and more school district administrators and school bus contractors view the "new school bus" for the first time and endeavor to seat the upper-grade students in the confined seating.

The immediate effects have been that school boards have recinded local ordances limiting the age of equipment used for pupil transportation; school bus contractors have revised operational policies and, instead of adhering to their normal vehicle replacement programs, intend to obtain longer utilization of school buses in their fleets by upgrading maintenance programs; and school bus passengers are resisting any but the shortest of rides in those seats with their cramped, restricted seating space.

The result is that school boards, school bus contractors, and school bus body manufacturers are recognizing that the new school bus seating will discourage, to a great extent, the transportation of other than children in the lower/middle grades. Passengers will shun these vehicles like the plague for extra-curricular activities and field trips. The opposition to these seats will force school boards to look elsewhere for other types of transportation for these activities. Manufacturers of school bus bodies recognized this possibility long ago, as they viewed the seat spacing mandated by Standard 222, and submitted a petition to the NHTSA for a special sub-classification of school bus - an activity bus with greater seat spacing - that would replace the conventional school bus for these and other activities.

Our school districts - our communities - cannot withstand the tremendous expense of another separate bus fleet this "activity bus" petition would create. Our school districts will not be able to withstand the opposition they will experience against utilization of the "new" school bus with its restrictive seat spacing; but at the same time, their budgets will be incapable of withstanding the alternative . . . . separate bus fleets, taxicabs, payment for pupil transportation by parents.

Our industry realizes that the seats designed to conform to Standard 222 have thicker cushioning; that the same number of seats as was installed in a "pre-April 1, 1977" school bus requires a longer bus body on the new bus. Our industry realizes that allowing a greater seat spacing may require an even longer bus body, or perhaps fewer rows of seats in the bus . . . . but the alternatives are far beyond our school district budget's ability to underwrite.

It is for these reasons that we suggest the questions facing you today are far different than those posed to the NHTSA in September of 1976. It is for these reasons that we respectfully suggest that the NHTSA, recognizing that the question of seat spacing today has far greater implications than in 1976, may wish to allow an immediate relief from the problem through the expediency of a permissive interpretation that would permit school bus manufacturers to measure the knee-room distance at a point where the seat back components are the closest.

May we once again request your considerations for this prmissive interpretation? It is the opinion of the Wisconsin School Bus Association, representative of Wisconsin's pupil transportation industry - and other pupil transportation industry members and representatives throughout the Nation - that this permissive ability would be an important and immediate interim answer to this perplexing and serious problem.

Dick Rechlicz Executive Secretary