Interpretation ID: nht80-3.31

DATE: 08/05/80

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; F. Berndt; NHTSA

TO: Department of Public Instruction - North Dakota

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This responds to your July 3, 1980, letter asking whether a ramp device used in school buses for the transportation of the handicapped would be in conflict with the Federal safety standard for school bus emergency exits if the ramp partially blocked the rear exit when it folded into the bus. You indicate in your letter that the ramp would make the exit release mechanism difficult to operate for small children. Although your letter provides few details concerning the ramp, we conclude that it probably would render the vehicle in noncompliance with the emergency exit regulation.

Standard No. 217, Bus Window Retention and Release, regulates the number and size of school bus emergency exits and requires that the release mechanisms of those exits be readily accessible. The purpose of these requirements, of course, is to provide an easily operable, unobstructed school bus emergency exit. In the past, we have preempted a State requirement for a safety chain that would have been placed across an exit, because we viewed the chain as providing an obstruction to the opening. Similarly, it appears to us that the ramp you describe would provide an impediment to emergency vehicle exits and would not permit easy access to the release mechanism. Accordingly, we conclude that a bus with such a ramp as original equipment would not comply with the Federal safety standards. We note further that the ramp could not be added as aftermarket equipment by any manufacturer, dealer, or repair business, without rendering inoperative the compliance of the bus with the safety standard. Nothing, however, precludes a school from adding the ramps to its own vehicles except the possibility of increased liability in the event a child is injured in an accident involving the bus.

There are many possible devices designed to aid the transportation of the handicapped that would not conflict with the standards. For example, many vehicles have lifts designed for handicapped use. It might also be possible to have a ramp at the rear door that stows under the vehicle when not in use rather than in the passenger compartment. Any of these alternatives would be better than a ramp that might block the emergency exit.

SINCERELY,

THE STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA

Department of Public Instruction

July 3, 1980

Roger Tilton Office of Chief Counsel National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Dear Mr. Tilton: A bus used to transport handicapped people has a ramp device at the rear door of the bus. The ramp is bolted to the floor of the bus and folds to be brought inside the bus for travel. The ramp remains in front of the door when the door is closed. The door latch can be reached so the door could be opened from the inside and the ramp pushed out for use as an emergency exit, although this would be fairly difficult for a very young child.

We have been asked if a device of this type would be in conflict with the Safety Standard for emergency exits for school buses.

Can any type of device be located inside the emergency door as original equipment on a school bus based on the Safety Standard for emergency exits?

Thank you for your help.

ROLLAND LARSON, Director

Pupil Transportation

(Graphics omitted)