On The Alternative...

Seat Belts on School Buses

This is an issue that I have always wondered about as well, and when I saw your contest I decided that I would take minute or two and see if I couldn't find some answers.

It seems that the question is not precisely one of whether or not seat belts would make school buses safer. Rather it is whether or not installing seat belts in current school bus pools would cost money that is better spent improving other safety issues involved in bus transportation programs. In order to figure this out we have to find out where and how preventable fatalities occur in relation to busing.

According "The Straight Dope" (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a981106a.html) 11 kids are killed per year due to the lack of seat belts on school buses. The author goes on to note that this number is significantly less than how many are killed while entering or exiting a school bus. I notice that today school buses come with a long yellow arm that comes out from the front of the bus, activated when the driver pulls the same lever that activates the stop sign we are all aware of. Kids walking in front of the bus have to walk around this long yellow bar and this gives them greater visibility to both the bus driver and oncoming traffic, thusly reducing the number of deaths when entering or exiting the bus.

When I was child, not that many years ago, school buses did not have these long yellow arms. Clearly someone, somewhere, or more likely, a group of someones, decided to spend some money to improve safety in this regard. When doing so, they likely had to make room in various budgets to accommodate the upgrades and improvements. Put another way, it was the long yellow bar or seat belts, and this saved more lives.

Of course, most people will feel, with all the seat belt hysteria (and rightfully so) that it is absurd to require belts for kids in passenger cars while they bounce around all over the place daily on the way to school. These people will say "damn the cost" and insist that belts be added, no matter what has to be taken away so we can afford them.

Ok, great, if thats the way you feel. Now, design a seat belt that fits kids of all sizes correctly *without the kids themselves being responsible for the adjustment*. My six year old has to sit in a booster seat that correctly positions the shoulder belt on his body so that his neck is not snapped by it in an accident. The idea of a one-size-fits-all belt implies the existence of technology that would be many years away, even if we started working on it today. I know that NY and NJ require seat belts on buses. If they have figured out how to overcome this problem I would be interested to know how.

Furthermore, there is a world of difference between an in-town bus that seldom goes over 30 MPH and a car that regularly exceeds 60 MPH. I have the benefit (first time I have been able to call it that) of having been in a 25 MPH collision in a school bus where the driver smashed into a car that turned out from a side street. I bounced off the cushioning in the seat in front of me and was fine.

This post has already gone on long enough. My intention here was to illustrate the other side since so many of your entrants seemed to respond so very positively to the idea. I will end by saying that I am sure there are ways to make busing safer, I am just not convinced that spending $800 million (from the Straight Dope article) on seat belts should be the first step, or even if it should be a step at all.


~Das