Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Definition of Multifunction School Activity Bus

Resumen

Under existing Federal requirements, all school buses must be equipped with crash avoidance devices designed to control traffic (i.e., flashing lights and stop arms) because the use of most school buses includes stopping in the roadway to pick children up from and drop them off at home. There is a need in those circumstances to stop nearby traffic during the loading and unloading of children. This notice proposes to establish a subcategory of relatively small school buses that would not be used to pick school children up from or drop them off at home. These school buses would, accordingly, not be required to have traffic control features. They would, however, be required to meet all other school bus crash avoidance requirements and all crashworthiness and post-crash requirements. These buses would be known as "multifunction school activity buses." It is anticipated that these buses would be used by child care facilities to drop children off at school at the beginning of the school day or pick them up from school at the end of the school day, by schools to transport children from school to extracurricular activities and back, and by "coordinated transportation" systems to provide a