New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) yesterday called for legislation to ensure the safety of modified school buses, which he said never passed any safety tests, but account for 90 percent of the nation’s school buses.
In the previous legislative session earlier this year, Article 26 of the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (幼兒教育及照顧法) was amended to require school buses to be less than 10 years old, but more safety requirements are needed to protect children, Hsu told a news conference at the NPP caucus office in Taipei.
He proposed introducing more safety standards for school buses, including legislation mandating that vehicles pass crash tests.
Photo: CNA
About 90 percent of school buses in the nation have been modified from domestically manufactured vans designed to carry passengers and goods, he said.
Of the 3,816 registered school buses across the nation, 3,570 are Mitsubishi Delicas and 230 are Ford Econovans, he added.
While the majority of the school buses are modifications, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Automotive Research and Testing Center, none have applied for safety tests for children’s passenger cars, because it is not a legal requirement, he said.
The lack of regulations poses a great risk to children’s safety, with statistics showing that modified school buses account for the majority of the more than 100 school bus accidents in the past three years, which have killed one person and injured more than 100, he said.
School buses modified from trucks offer little protection to children, because they were only required to pass crash tests designed to ensure the safety of the driver when they were made, car blogger Ponde (龐德) said.
Those modified from passenger vans are equally ineffective in protecting child passengers, because their car seats are designed for adults, he said.
For airbags to effectively protect children, the seats should be elevated, he added.
The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications are to work together to research and draft regulations on school buses to better ensure children’s safety, said Lin Liang-ching (林良慶), an official at the education ministry’s K-12 Education Administration who attended the news conference.
Current safety regulations on cars are based on the EU’s safety standards and the department will continue to improve regulations to better ensure safety, said Lee Chao-hsien (李昭賢), a specialist with the Department of Railways and Highways.
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