STERLING, Va. Seatbelts: To retrofit or not to retrofit?

Motorcoach operators will have some pretty tough decisions to make once federal regulators settle on how far to go with their upcoming mandate for safety belts on coaches.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration have yet to officially announce if the belts will be required only on new coaches or if existing buses will be included as well. However, there are indications the pending requirement will only cover new coaches.

Either way, operators will be faced with a dilemma - spending thousands of dollars to retrofit their buses or potentially losing thousands of dollars in revenue if they dont.

The USDOT announced in November that it plans early this year to begin a rule-making procedure to mandate seatbelts. However, it said nothing about the requirement being for both new and used coaches, or if it would require two-point lap belts or three-point shoulder and lap belts.

"We just dont know what theyre going to do," said safety consultant Matthew Daecher of the Daecher Consulting Group during a panel discussion at the United Motorcoach Associations sixth annual Safety Management Seminar.

He and others indicated the requirement on new coaches is a given, while extending the rule to cover existing coaches is uncertain, generally because of the high cost of retrofitting older buses and some legal concerns that regulators may not have the authority to issue an order affecting existing fleets.

"Most speculation is that they do have the right to do it, but if they do, they also would need to have some kind of funding program for the operators," Daecher said.

The cost to add lap belts to most existing coaches would be between $6,000 and $8,000 for each bus, while installing three-point belts on them would run between $45,000 and $50,000, according to Louis Hotard of ABC Companies.

The wide difference, he said, is because the two-point belts could use the existing rails on most Van Hool buses that ABC sells, while the three-point units would require the installation of two large braces to the underside of the coach.

Virgil Hoogestraat of Motor Coach Industries suggested that some of the older buses still being used by some operators might be difficult to retrofit because of the way they were manufactured.

"The requirement probably would have to be restricted to the age of the bus," he said.

Aloke Prasad of the NHTSA said federal officials are still waiting for the final analysis of crash tests that the government conducted on seatbelt use last year and those findings are expected to play a key role in the scope of the mandate that will be proposed.

He noted, though, that preliminary results show that lap belts alone are not adequate to protect passengers in an accident. "Two-point belts in a frontal impact are not a good situation," he said.

The final report on the tests is expected to be released shortly.

Daecher said if existing coaches are not included in the rule, operators would be faced with the quandary of installing belts on at least some of their existing buses to meet the demands of customers.

"Customer demand and competitor pressure may dictate them," he said.

A number of operators attending the seminar said many of their customers already are requesting that only coaches with seatbelts be used on their charters and if they cant fill the order they could be out substantial amounts of revenue.

Insurance issues also will play a critical role in the seatbelt issue because more and more judges across the country now are allowing the absence of them to be part of accident liability suits, according to Paul Berne of Lancer Insurance.

"Its the feeling of jurors that the absence of seatbelts is wrong," he added.

However, he warned that operators should be cautions if they decide to retrofit any of their existing buses with seatbelts.

"You need to insulate your company from liability," he said.

Berne suggested that only coaches that are structurally capable of handling seatbelts should be retrofitted, only certified installers should be used and all work should be carefully documented.

And, once the newly equipped coaches are ready for the highway, drivers should be trained to check the belts regularly and the inspection of the belts should be added to the schedule of regular maintenance.

Daecher said the only issue that seems to be missing from the seatbelt discussion around the industry is if passengers will use them.

"Thats the question: are they really going to use them," he said