Banish rickety buses, Govt is ready with new rules: safe, comfortable and disabled friendly

• Buses to provide access to handicapped and old people

• Different seating-to-standing ratios for inter-city and intra-city travel. City buses need to provide sufficient standing space while long-distance ones need to ensure comfortable seating for majority travelers

• These features need to take into account the paying capacity of travellers without compromising on safety

• Only tested material/components to be used for making the body. The material needs to be tested for fire hazards and for accidents

The guidelines, which would be issued under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, would also create accreditation boards both at the national and regional level that would certify buses that meet the new norms.

As many as 50,000 new buses hit the Indian roads each year. The difference between buying a complete bus from a manufacturer and getting it built on a chasis by a body builder can be around Rs 10 lakh. But these body builders, more often than not, don’t have the requisite technology and components to build safe and comfortable vehicles.

Under the proposed notification, these small-scale body builders would have to have their capability and competence certified from the board. Some of these requirements include:

• A team of certified engineers working in the organisation

• In-house expertise in computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) or access to the same

• In-house crash testing facilities or access to same

Bus owners who opt for retrofitting chassis would be required to obtain certification from only those body builders who have been certified by the board while filing for registration under Form 22 A.