2007 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 117-126
The number of elderly and physically challenged people who fall down in buses is increasing in Japan. Hence, in the fiscal year 2004, we installed non-slippery and ecological floor material made of quartz in a bus and requested customers and bus companies to provide functional evaluations. In the fiscal year 2005, we equipped buses from three companies with the new floor material. Each research revealed that on the whole, approximately 80% of the customers evaluated the non-slip function of the material highly. Additionally, we received a high evaluation for the design of the flooring and the affinity of their shoes to the material. These days, in the process of developing low-floor buses, the 0.52 corporate social responsibility (CSR) value is used as the standard based on the regulations of the Japan Auto-body Industries Association, Inc. However, in this research, we introduced the best CSR value as floor material for universally designed buses. We recognized the CSR for low-floor buses as 0.566. This finding will be useful when the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport sets a new standard for developing low-floor buses.
