Reading any NFPA standard can be a laborious process at best. But they are some of the most fundamentally important documents at our disposal in the fire service.
The work that members of any NFPA technical committee put into developing and revising the standards, which are revised on a five-year schedule, is truly a labor of love.
NFPA 1901: Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus is one of our more important governing documents because it addresses the one thing that every fire department has. After poring over the changes contained in the 2016 edition of NFPA 1901, I've compiled what struck me as some of the more influential changes. Chapter 4: General requirements - Vehicle data recorders that can capture data to use in promoting safe driving and riding practices has been added as a requirement. Also, vehicles must now have a calculated center of gravity that is no greater than 80 percent of the vehicle's height, as determined through tilt-table testing, or it must have a vehicle stability system (4.11 and 4.13).