| Author | Message | ||
| joe (Joe_Littlewind) (12.14.244.6)
Rating: |
I am almost finished w/first upgrade to my 4106. Putting in ¾ nail-down pre-finished maple, Wains-coating & chair rail (why not Joe’s coating), new headliner (who is Wain any way). Need to figure out center lighting (CCF too much $ & halogen too darn hot!). I've got new seats picked out. And I designed a cool dinette that can be configured so the seats all face forward and have seat belts for 4. We have a trip planned for the end of September. My wife (an x-emergency room nurse who has run her share of codes) sayz to me "these seats and the dinette are going to have shoulder harnesses, right?" I look at her with one of those stares. You know, the one that sayz "you've got to be kidding. Please God, tell me she's kidding!" She wasn't kidding. So tell me, what do your seats have? I'm going to be hulling me, my other, & our 2 little girls. To purchase new seats w/shoulder harnesses is alot of drm! I'm looking at a couple of grand for the pilot & co-pilot! We can almost aford it but what is safe and what is overkill? If nothing else, thanks for listening... Joe | ||
| madbrit (216.67.210.127) Rating: N/A |
Joe, I don't want to rain on your parade, but seat belts are a real science. If the belt is not installed correctly, it can do more harm than good. When I lived back in England, we had a 1974 Winniebago, English law insisted it have seat belts for the front occupants. There were seat belts, albeit lap only, installed. The Ministry of Transport inspector passed the vehicle at its annual inspection, but advised me not to wear them as they were not on factory tested mounts. He said the mounts may well fail when you least expect it and you may be in a worse situation than if you were not wearing a belt in the first place. If you have people sitting in a rearward or sideways direction, that is a whole different ballgame and a shoulder belt could cause serious injury. Even if all passengers are facing forward, the actual seat must comply to certain regulations, which a dinette probably won't. To be safe, all occupants must be in regulation seats, with attached belts and those seats must be attached to the frame of the bus in a recognised manner. Peter. | ||
| joe (Joe_Littlewind) (12.14.225.167)
Rating: N/A |
Peter, Thanks for your input. My wife & I were shopping for an RV about a year ago. I'm an old aircraft mechanic/pilot and I thought the RVs we looked at were about as crash-worthy as the planes I used to work on, maybe a little less. I joined the RV Consumer Group and found that there are no or too few regulations governing the safety of RV construction. After collecting some info on RV collisions, it was clear that the units shed parts followed by the occupants, and in many cases the upper deck was totally gone. So we started looking at busses and I liked the GMC because of the type of construction. The dinettes that I have looked at are mostly made of particleboard and some even had seat belts attached to them! The dinette I have designed is steal secured the bus structure (got some nice drawings if you want to see’m). The seats I am considering are FlexSteal with intregal lap/shoulder belts but for over $1000 each. So now I am reviewing the applicable MVSS standards that cover belt attachments and locations and looking in the scrap yards for belts that I think will work. I don’t think I can afford the sciance but I can’t afford not having Mommy feeling safe. Later, Joe | ||
| Mark R. Obtinario (Cowlitzcoach) (206.163.13.19)
Rating: N/A |
I think you are into a bit of overkill if you ask me. When you talk to your wife about people who have arrived at her establishment requiring codes, ask he how many of them were in a bus. I doubt you could fabricate a dinette that would meet or exceed FMVSS and still move the seating from forward to rearward or sideward seating. Not at least without having a bowl of spaghetti to untangle every time. Most buses do not have the underfloor attachment points necessary for proper seatbelt attachment. You will have to reinforce the floor for lap belts and the side walls if you are going to use shoulder belts. I would be reluctant to trust my life and the lives of my loved ones to seatbelts that have been removed from a wreck. Particularly not since you can purchase brand new seat belts from NAPA very inexpensively. I realize in order to keep peace in the family you are going to have to do something. I just don't think you can do anything more than window dressing without major modifications. Good luck and happy trails. Mark O. | ||
| dougthebonifiedbusnut (24.147.153.205)
Rating: N/A |
i think there comes a time when you have to ask yourself if what your doing is really what you want to be doing i will have seatbelts in the two forward seats only but i wlii tell you that ifi have an accident there will be about 12 inches between me and whatever i hit no seat belt in the world is going to keep me out of harms way as far as the occupants are concerned if you hit something that sops you that quickly than i dont think the seatbelts are going to make much differance i am goingg to think in terms of driving in such a way that i will not have to worry to much about the inherant danger and having 26 years of proffesional heavy truck driving behind me i can worry about other stuff | ||
| joe (Joe_Littlewind) (12.14.225.167)
Rating: N/A |
Mark O., Thanks for your views. I think much of what you say is true, esp the part about spaghetti. But then to write those mean things about MY dinette design! Oh ye of little faith. We shall see. Joe | ||
| Jack Conrad (Jackconrad) (207.30.189.14)
Rating: N/A |
Joe, As a Paramedic/Firefighter, I know where your wife is coming from. We removed all the original plywood flooring in our MC-8. Before installing new plywood floors, I welded 1/2" thick x 6" wide steel plates where the co-pilot seat was to be installed. This plate was drilled and tapped to allow seat pedastal and seat belts to be attached with grade8 1/2" bolts. We do not plan to install seat belts at dinette. Seat belts on sofa will be attached to framing in wall of bus. Sofa seat belts will be marginal at best because they are holding in a lateral rather than longitudinal direction. Usually it is just my wife and I in our bus. Jack | ||
| Neil 88 Setra (216.136.70.109)
Rating: N/A |
The FMVSS requires seatbelts for all occupant seating areas where there will be persons seated while the vehicle is underway on the highway. Shoulder harness types are required only for the pilot and copilot. I've never seen a bus or motor home with shoulder belts anywhere else. The main purpose of seat belts is to keep you in place in case of a rollover, secondarily to keep you in place in a frontal crash. Here in western NC where I live, most traffic fatalities are from unbelted occupants who were ejected from the vehicle and subsequently rolled or run over. Those who managed to stay inside the vehicle usually survive. Most production motor homes shred to pieces in a rollover but a bus, because of steel framing overhead and in sidewalls, manages to stay together, hence safer in a rollover. FWIW- | ||
| Clarke Echols (216.17.134.8)
Rating: N/A |
As stated, seat belts help keep people inside in a rollover. How useful they are in a collision is open for discussion. If a 35,000 pound coach going 70 mph hits a 3000 pound car coming the other direction at 70 mph head-on, the bus will slow down about 5 mph. Roughly equivalent to walking 5 mph into a wall. Serious injury not likely. The guy in the car, though, will have what I call an "abrupt experience". Not much need for a shoulder belt here for the bus occupants, and I don't know if even an air bag would help the people in the car. If you hit a truck, as in semi, that's a different story, as is hitting a bridge abutment. But if that happens, unless you've done an unusually good job of anchoring stuff in the bus, overhead cabinets could come crashing down, refrigerator, microwave, etc. come flying loose, chairs flying all over the place, and a seat belt might not help at all, even if it holds. I saw a Winniebago small Class A in a tow yard near our home a couple of years ago that had been in a collision in the right-front corner. I was dumbfounded at how much damage had occurred inside given what appeared to be a not-all-that-severe collision. Cabinets were lying about all over inside, the outer wall next to the copilot was 3/4-inch plywood with an inch of white styrofoam bead-board sandwiched between it and a layer of about 3/16-inch fiberboard with a wood-grain vinyl finish of some sort. Talk about a piece of junk! Even if the seat belts held, you'd be at risk of being killed by falling cabinets! If you roll down a mountain side, stuff rolling and flying around in the bus could easily kill everyone inside, so don't do that. On the other hand, if you hit a situation where you roll it over on its side, belts may or may not be helpful. Seat belts are not required on commercial buses. They apparently are required on "consumer buses", aka motorhomes, for all "occupants". But what do you do when you have 13 people in a coach but seat belts for 3 on the couch plus driver and copilot. The only time I can see where belts would help significantly is in a major mishap which likely would involve major screw-up by the coach driver. If the driver doesn't make mistakes, it's people outside the coach that have need to worry about not getting in front of it. After seeing a tour bus that hit a tree at the right-front because the driver attempted to miss a car making a left turn in front of him and died from the injuries, I decided if someone gets in front of me, it's their problem. The driver who made the turn in front of him was drunk. I'm not going to risk my life for someone else's stupidity. I came too close to getting killed nine years ago when a woman in a 280 ZX broadsided me in a Cadillac and destroyed two cars after leaving a 120-foot feather skid mark on the pavement. She was doing somewhere between 75 and 90 in a 55 mph zone while going through a major cloverleaf intersection with an interstate highway. Vietnamese, age 40. Apparently "learned" to drive as an adult over here and liked fast cars. That's why the floor deck under the cockpit area and copilot seat in the bus I'm building is made from 3/16-inch steel plate and the spare-tire compartment sidewalls are 3/16 plate, the rear and bottom are 1/8 plate, and the front corner posts are 4 x 6-inch 1/4-inch wall rectangular steel tubing (also holds the torque rods for the front-axle suspension). It is designed and intended to survive most head-on collisions intact. | ||
| joe (Joe_Littlewind) (12.14.244.5)
Rating: N/A |
Hay Mr Clarke Echols, So tell me, how many belts and shoulder harnesses are you going to put in your unit? Joe | ||
| Clarke (216.17.134.63)
Rating: N/A |
I'll probably put a lap belt on pilot and copilot seats to pass state DOT VIN safety inspection. Putting shoulder harnesses on sofas is impractical, and if passengers happened to be sitting sideways to coach travel (normal situation), it's difficult if not dangerous to be lap belted all the way around. This is one of those "nice in theory" situations. How a belt should be designed/installed/used depends on the type of accident you're trying to deal with, and there's no such thing as a good answer that covers all situations due to the many variables, including flying objects of lethal proportion. I know a man who had a conversion done on an MC-9, and he had a normal household sofa, free standing dinette table, and unrestrained chairs on rollers. I also don't think his household refrigerator was tied down. Talk about an opportunity for "flying objects"! |
