Industry professionals expressed a range of reactions in the wake of a National Congress of School Transportation vote in May that overwhelmingly rejected a provision to require LED lighting on many school bus exterior fixtures.
The vote was perplexing, some said, because LEDs are recognized as superior in visibility, energy efficiency, longer lifespan and flexibility compared to incandescent lights. With the NCST’s mission being to set safety standards, and only currently meeting every five years, delegates take the added proposals seriously. Editor’s note—The NCST Steering Committee is currently debating the frequency of NCST. A decision is expected this spring.
During the 17th NCST in Des Moines, Iowa, state transportation directors and industry professionals convened to determine new recommended specs and minimum standards across the industry. Forty-eight states were represented by a total of 265 delegates. North Dakota, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia were absent.
Proposal 25 to require LEDs on “all exterior body/chassis lighting with the exception of head/park/turn combination assemblies” failed by a vote of two in favor and 45 opposed. A Pennsylvania delegate disputed the proposal’s statement that it carried no financial impact. Delegates from several states asserted that including LEDs in specifications would beholden districts to the technology, even if future technology proves to be a better option.
Dave McDonald, executive vice president of business development and specifications compliance with Rosco Vision Systems, sat on the Body and Chassis Committee that vetted the proposal and approved it for a floor vote. He is among the committee members who think delegates who voted it down didn’t fully understand what the proposal sought to do.
He compared the LED proposal outcome to a defeated proposal for remote-controlled side mirrors, which he said are an OEM feature on 92 percent of new school buses.
“We look at remote control mirrors as being a safety necessity, not a convenience, because it only takes the driver to properly adjust them, rather than needing two people, one outside the bus adjusting it, and the driver sitting in the seat,” McDonald said. “Delegates looked at it as a state-to-state-to-state issue: ‘Don’t make it part of the national standard.’ The standard doesn’t say anything that you can’t have LED lights, but they leave it open for
the states to either adopt it or not. That was the biggest thing. The states, some of them, get very, very objectionable when it comes to being told what they have to do.”
However, McDonald said, it is important for people to understand how the NCST voting process works. “The NCST is the minimum standard … and then states can go beyond that. If it’s approved, it becomes a standard in every state that adopts the [National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures],” he said. “They can add to it, but they can’t take away from it. Some states will use it as a guideline, but they don’t fully adopt it. … But for the most part, states still control bus specifications for their particular state.”
Jim Haigh, the strategic account manager of school and transit for Safe Fleet, added that LEDs are just one type of light source. Vehicles today, he said, use incandescent lamps, quartz halogen and HID/Xenon, in addition to LEDs. “There are many other light sources currently in use and LED’s are not necessarily the most beneficial source of light for all applications,” he shared. “I believe that [delegates] didn’t want to lock themselves into one technology and prevent the use of emerging technologies in the future.”
Mike VerStrat, communications manager of Opti-Luxx, Inc., said NCST delegates are savvy enough to recognize that LED lighting is “already the de facto standard on new buses,” particularly because of the newer technology’s many advantages.
Brett Kuchciak, specification and compliance manager at First Light Safety Products in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, said he and other manufacturer representatives at the NCST were “quite surprised by the big down vote,” especially because the Body and Chassis Committee thoroughly vetted various options and proposals.
“It’s interesting because a lot of people do think any decision they make at the national level is going to have a cost implication. Most of these decisions, regardless of cost implication, though, are for a justified reason, which in this case is safety,” he said.
Kuchciak said a Canadian Standards Association committee is working on standardizing LED lights under the voluntary CSA D250 standard. “Despite the NCST not going forward, we think it’s something beneficial for the safety of school buses,” he said.
McDonald and Kuchciak noted that some northern state fleet operators prefer incandescent exterior lights because their heat melts snow and ice. “It’s not something that’s widely seen as a benefit, but you’ll get the occasional shop guy who says that,” Kuchciak said. “Typically, though, something that gets hot on a school bus is not ideal. You’d rather have the safety factor of an LED light because before you leave the yard, you’re going to make sure the bus is clear and free of snow, anyway.”
VerStrat said some delegates’ hesitance to support Proposal 25, due to the belief that better technology could emerge, is “almost a sideways compliment to LEDs” because of their rapid adoption by the transportation industry. For example, fewer than eight percent of cars globally had LED headlamps in 2015, according to one industry estimate. Another survey indicated approximately 72 percent of autos were equipped with LEDs by 2023 with the number expected to rise to 75 percent by 2024.
Because the 2020 NCST was canceled, delegates really haven’t had an opportunity to address the issue until now despite their surge in use. “LEDs have rushed onto the forefront, so to speak, and I think that makes delegates say, ‘What else is coming? What’s the next thing?’” added VerStrat, noting there’s a need to give NCST delegates “a real understanding of what, if any, technologies are coming.”
McDonald, who has served on NCST writing committees since 2000, said the 2020 NCST cancellation created a log jam of proposals for consideration. While committees whittled down that backlog and this year’s delegates addressed many issues, “2030 will be an interesting one, because they’re still going to have some carryover items,” added McDonald, who retires from Rosco next month.
The creation of the emerging technologies writing committee will help in the future consideration of many issues, including innovations such as loading zone illumination.
What about some NCST delegates’ concerns that better technology will displace LEDs any time soon? “There’s not anything that you would remotely say is going to be a standard other than LEDs in the near future,” commented VerStrat. “There’s nothing that competes with the performance and reliability of LEDs right now.”
Kuchciak agreed and noted that First Light and industry peers are “trying to get the most out of the technology that’s available to make it as uniform, bright and efficient as possible.” He continued, “Technology is only going to continue to get more dialed in to provide a safer and more efficient lighting source. Constant improvements are happening in the industry. So, things are always getting better.”
Kyle Lawrence, lead mechanic for the Oakdale Joint Unified School District in California, said he wasn’t surprised the proposal was defeated because he thinks many industry professionals still undervalue the importance of lighting and visibility. Others, he added, are locked into long-held industry
beliefs. The safety value of LEDs goes beyond its increased visibility to include the reduced maintenance time that comes with its longer life. “It’s much better to have my techs spending their time on preventive maintenance that will keep the buses out of the shop. With LEDs, you’re not having a tech out there changing bulbs,” Lawrence said.
He warned against the shortsightedness of saving $30 upfront on a part only to spend an extra $300 in labor over the life of a bus to change what he deemed to be inferior lighting.
“Some bulbs can be quick, but some can be a drawn-out, two- or three-hour project because you have to keep taking off a whole bumper to change a light bulb that keeps burning out,” he said. “Our roads here at rural Oakdale are horrible, so anything that wiggles and jiggles either unscrews, falls out or decides it doesn’t want to work anymore. LEDs have a much better success rate.”
He also contrasted many LED lifetime warranties with those of incandescent bulbs. “Some of our after-market LED providers carry no-questions-asked warranties, so if we’ve got a seven-diode taillight that loses a couple diodes, we just take it off, put it back in the package, ship it to them, and they ship a new one,” Lawrence said. “If you play your cards right with the aftermarket industry, you’re only going to spend the money once.”
Most LED chips are manufactured in Asia, primarily China, and imports have been caught up in the on-again, off-again tariffs imposed by the Trump ad-
ministration to drive manufacturing to the U.S. Industry experts contend that is little to no chance that LED chips can be made in the U.S. at a competitive price.
Lawrence said LED lights are less expensive than 10 years ago, but tariffs and inflation have made them more expensive than five years ago. He said he foresees even better days ahead for the technology and the fleet management professionals who deploy it.
“It takes less energy to create light with LEDs, and I think the diodes and chips are progressively getting more reliable, have longer life and brighter
illumination,” he said. “If you’re not using LED, you’re shooting yourself in the foot and walking backwards with a limp.”
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Looking to the future, VerStrat predicted delegates will be able to return to the drawing board and draft a “win-win” proposal on LED exterior lighting. And with incandescent bulbs being used less, will a 2030 or sooner NCST look kindly at the next LED proposal? McDonald isn’t so sure.
“It’s like the mirrors. Ninety-two percent are remote controlled, but that proposal was defeated. We may end up with 90 percent of the buses with LEDs, but that doesn’t guarantee that the states are going to vote to make that the minimum standard,” McDonald said. “The minimum standard is the incandescent bulb. … That’s what it is because some states don’t want to spend the extra money on LEDs.”
Kuchciak said the price gap between incandescent lighting and LEDs will become less of a factor as more buses roll off the assembly line with the newer technology. But he also warned against the dangers of being overly cautious about adopting new technology.
“It’s important that we look at the NCST as a minimum standard. We’re slowing down progress by being concerned with it limiting things in the future,” he said. “If we have something outlined as a minimum standard, and it goes above and beyond, that is for these states to decide if that is something that they want to pursue within their state or whether the OEMs want to go above and beyond these minimum standards. We don’t want innovations to slowed just because we think something better is going to come out.”
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the November 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
