10 ministries gathering to discuss New Standards for School Buses

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January 5, 2012, led by the National Development and Reform Commission, 10 ministries including Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 10 major domestic passenger car manufacturers gathered in Beijing to discuss the new standard for school buses and made suggestion.

“The new standard for school buses” has caused widespread controversy. A number of mainstream passenger car manufacturers claimed that the “new school bus standards penned by the Yutong-related personnel and make the ‘Yutong standard’, which suited to the medium and big bus companies as the industry standard. It didn’t consider the condition of  small companies. “New standard for school buses” is based on the standard of United States and other developed countries.

Zhou Huici, from Yutong, is the leader of the group as well as the author of New Standard for School Bus. At the meeting, she repeatedly emphasized the U.S. standards, that the school bus in the United States has a long nose, which is much more secure in the event of such a collision. She also said that the reason that New Standard requires 5mm thickness of the bumper is according to the result of Tsinghua University and Peking University.

But in the opinions of FAW, Dongfeng, King Long, SGMW, Foton and other auto companies, the U.S. standard is obviously alienated from reality.

The situation in China is different. Many places in China are still constrained by the level of economic development. They cannot even afford the school bus, let alone meet U.S. standards.

Participants of Ministry of transportation believed that 5 meters wide school bus suits more to the Chinese market. “School bus promotion focuses on the rural areas.” Leaders of Ministry of Transportation claimed that most parents in rural areas are not around, children are taken care of their grandparents, and they are usually far from school. Thus in these places people have higher dependence on the school bus.

As the road construction in rural China is relatively backward, long and big school bus simply cannot turn around there. In addition, the size of rural schools is small, so there is no parking space for big coach, plus the operating costs of large school bus is unaffordable. The New standard is not acclimatized. A representative of ministry of transportation said that the length of most school buses should be around 8 meters. In terms of safety, smaller coach, fewer passengers, thus the accident casualties will be reduced accordingly. His preliminary suggestion is that the number of passengers carried by each school bus should not exceed 45 people.

After visited some place and market research he found that the problem is not the product of the school bus, and the accidents were not led by product defect. The crashed school bus in Hunan Hengna was converted by the tricycle, and in Qingyang, Gansu, the accidents were caused by serious overloading.

The best are the fittest.