man-hours required for assembly. However, the roll-form presses were very large, requiring special equipment to handle the finished panels. A more practical problem was the panels had to be cut to exact length for each bus body order, which varied with seating capacities and from state-to-state specifications. This created a marketing disadvantage as the Wayne factory required greater manufacturing lead time than in the past whereas the previous technology allowed for more interchangeability and customization in orders. Shortly after the Lifeguard was introduced, Wayne held a nationwide contest soliciting ideas to improve school bus safety, with a new Lifeguard school bus as the grand prize. The winning entry was submitted by a school bus driver in Goochland County, Virginia, whose district received the new school bus. Her idea was to incorporate sound baffles in the ceiling of school bus bodies to help reduce driver distraction. Compact forms of such equipment were later developed used by Wayne and other school bus manufacturers when diesel engines (and their greater noise) became more widely available in conventional-style school buses (like the Lifeguard) in the 1980s. Real-world Crash Testing The benefits of the Lifeguard design were proved in several potentially catastrophic collisions. For example, in 1982, at Petersburg, Virginia, a 1973 Wayne Lifeguard school bus transporting 41 elementary school children was struck broad-side at an intersection by a fire truck that had gone through a red traffic signal without stopping while responding to an alarm. The school bus was rocked violently, but after the fire truck literally bounced off of it (rather than penetrating the body); the bus driver was able to regain control and stop safely. The fire truck was spun 180° and its front was demolished; all 3 firefighters were hospitalized. The bus driver and all children were transported to the hospital as well. One child on the bus suffered a broken arm; the rest were mostly scared but uninjured. Further investigation of the collision revealed that the impact of the fire truck had failed to overcome the strength of the longitudinal panels and the guard rails. Investigators discovered that despite a bulge of several inches on the longitudinal interior panel, there had been no all-the way through penetration of the passenger compartment whatsoever, no joint separation, and no sharp edges created. Instead, they found the substantial impact stress had been shared over a widespread area along the entire structure of the