China has banned old school buses to combat rising death toll among the nation's school children.
According to the government's latest order, all children travelling on school buses should be seated and using substandard vehicles have also been banned from 1st September.
The new rule also stipulates that every child on a school bus must wear a safety belt and seats by aisles must be equipped with armrests.
Children, students or their parents are not encouraged to stand in the bus, under the guidelines.
The standards also require windows to have at least 50 per cent transparency for visible light and ban any reflective materials being stuck on windows, the news agency reported.
The standards require special signs to be posted on each school bus so that they can be easily identified from outside.
School buses are defined as ones that carry no less than five children, adolescents or their parents to and from kindergartens, primary schools or middle schools.
In November last year, 39 children were injured after a private bus carrying about 50 students veered off a bridge in north-eastern Heilongjiang province.
Six children and a driver died when a kindergarten bus overturned into a roadside ditch in southeast Hunan province in January this year.
A national inspection showed that primary and middle schools in rural areas often used discarded vehicles, lorries or even tractors as shuttle buses for students.
According to the Ministry of Public Security, the death toll from school bus accidents in the first quarter of 2007 rose by 8.2 per cent compared to the same period last year, although the actual figure was not given. - DDNEWS
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