CAN/CSA-D435-02 (R2012)

Overview

This Standard addresses occupant restraint during frontal impacts and does not address side or rear impact situations, due to the lack of available data. Based on information available to it, the Technical Committee responsible for developing this Standard has used a maximum deceleration of 3 g as the basis for developing the requirements of this Standard.

This is believed to be a reasonable maximum level of deceleration likely to be encountered in any frontal impact under normal operating conditions in transit service. This is more than the European standard of 1 g, but is thought to provide a good balance between safety and design.

This Standard does not presume to cover all possible situations that may be encountered in day-to-day operations. Care should always be taken to ensure that vehicles acquired serve the specific needs and operating conditions that apply to the transit system and its customers.

In keeping with the principle of minimum requirements cited above, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, generally accepted transit industry practice is presumed to be adequate. This is confirmed by a recent search carried out on the Traffic Accident Information Database (TRAID), which reports that over the 10-year period from 1988 to 1997, there were only three fatalities (two passenger and one operator) in total on transit buses in Canada. During that same period, transit buses logged 7.28 billion revenue kilometres in Canadian cities. For details on the application of this Standard, please refer to the Scope.

Scope

1.1
This Standard applies to accessible transit buses, as defined in Clause 2.

1.2
The values given in SI (metric) units are the standard. The values given in parentheses are for information only.