Seat Belts On School Buses

[MJS]

This past weekend, there was a pretty serious bus vs. car accident, which resulted in quite a few serious injuries, including one that was fatal. Here is a link. The story also focuses on the bus driver, as well as the 16yo driver of the other vehicle.

However, in this thread, I wanted to focus on what seems to be a hot topic since the crash...the use of seat belts on school buses. I dont know about anyone else, but when I was in school, taking the bus, it was packed. It was to the point, where you'd have more people than each seat could safely hold. I really dont see how the belts would've worked in that case. Additionally, I have to wonder about the effectiveness of just the lap belt, vs. something in which a shoulder belt, could also be used.

So, what are your thoughts? Should students be required to wear seat belts on a school bus?

 

[CanuckMA]

It's an interesting debate. On the on hand, a seat belt, especially a shoulder belt, could save lives. OTOH, after the crash, would the kids be able to unfasten the belts fast enough to get out of the bus?

 

[Gordon Nore]

It's an interesting debate. On the on hand, a seat belt, especially a shoulder belt, could save lives. OTOH, after the crash, would the kids be able to unfasten the belts fast enough to get out of the bus?

Good question. Now, is it always imperative to exit the vehicle following an incident? The age old argument against seat belts has always been, "What if I need to get out in a hurry?"

Why is it then that I must wear a seat belt in my car, or even in a taxi cab, but not on a bus? I used to travel to Elliot Lake, Ontario, to visit my parents. We were a one car family in those days, so I would would leave my car at home for my wife and take the Grey Hound. When I hit the end of the regular route, I'd get on a small school bus, which would hurtle down the highway in all kinds of Northern Ontario weather with no one strapped in, except for the driver.

 

[Steve]

On a phone so bear with me but this came up a while back. While I'm not opposed to seatbelt on biases I think that retrofitting belts is a colossal waste of money. When I get access to a computer ill add more and try to find the old thread.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

I don't know if it's a bad idea or a good one. I haven't studied the issue. But here is an interesting anecdote.

A CHP officer who gave us some training spoke about unintended consequences. He stated that prior to car seats being mandated and placed in the back seat of cars, no children were forgot and left to die in hot cars. Basically, out of sight; out of mind.

Hopefully, it the seat belts on busses are ultimately implemented, that all of the reasonably foreseeable consequences will be considered.

 

[Bruno@MT]

A CHP officer who gave us some training spoke about unintended consequences. He stated that prior to car seats being mandated and placed in the back seat of cars, no children were forgot and left to die in hot cars. Basically, out of sight; out of mind.

Still, the number of lives saved because of seatbelts is much, much higher than the number of deaths caused by seatbelts.

 

[MJS]

It's an interesting debate. On the on hand, a seat belt, especially a shoulder belt, could save lives. OTOH, after the crash, would the kids be able to unfasten the belts fast enough to get out of the bus?

Thats a good point, and I'm wondering if that will come up at some point, in the bill. Of course, the same concern could apply to our own personal vehicles as well. I know that many police/EMS/firefighters, etc. carry tools to cut the belts, but how many everyday people do? Probably not many, if any at all.

 

[MJS]

Good question. Now, is it always imperative to exit the vehicle following an incident? The age old argument against seat belts has always been, "What if I need to get out in a hurry?"

Why is it then that I must wear a seat belt in my car, or even in a taxi cab, but not on a bus? I used to travel to Elliot Lake, Ontario, to visit my parents. We were a one car family in those days, so I would would leave my car at home for my wife and take the Grey Hound. When I hit the end of the regular route, I'd get on a small school bus, which would hurtle down the highway in all kinds of Northern Ontario weather with no one strapped in, except for the driver.

Good points. While reading the letters to the editor in the paper this morning, people were commenting on similar things. One person stated that drivers, no matter how fast they're going, are ticketed for not wearing them in their cars, another writer stated that it would increase the cost of transportation and do nothing in the long run to really improve safety. Another member stated that on an airplane, the plane doesnt take off until everyone is belted in.

Another writer mentioned rear facing seats, and compared that logic to a car seat for a baby.

 

[Carol]

I don't really support the idea, much like I do not support the idea of seatbelts on city buses.

Kids seat two or three abreast in a bus seat. If the child in the window seat needs to get out, then that means the child in the aisle seat has to physically get up and move. Kids also tend to stand up near the front so they are at the ready when the bus stops. These things all partially negate the effects of seat belts.

There is also the darker side of me that is concerned about what the "bad kids" will do with the seatbelts. Vandals may cut them off or cover them with graffiti....or worse. Bullies might strap themselves in to an aisle seat and refuse to let out the child in the window seat in time for them to get out. The kids that are in to fighting might cut off the belts and use them as weapons.

How common are bus accidents? Personally I depended completely on public transit for 6 years and can recall being in three train accidents (all were train vs. pedestrian), but I have never been in any bus accidents.

 

[Carol]

One person stated that drivers, no matter how fast they're going, are ticketed for not wearing them in their cars

Not in my state. We have no seatbelt law for adults, and children over 12 are not required to wear them either. We have Noreasters, blizzards, mountains, black ice, Bostonians and all kinds of things that make driving challenging, but NH is not known for its highway carnage.

 

[dbell]

It's an interesting debate. On the on hand, a seat belt, especially a shoulder belt, could save lives. OTOH, after the crash, would the kids be able to unfasten the belts fast enough to get out of the bus?

As a Paramedic (or SF Medic or PA) I would have to say that in most cases, unless there is danger of further injury or death for staying in the vehicle after an accident, a person SHOULD remain in the vehicle until rescue crews arrive and check them out. If a person is injured staying still may stop that injury from becoming worse. If you are not hurt and need to help others that may be hurt, then get up and help them, else stay in place. It also makes it easier to figure out who is missing (if anyone) and makes it easier to evaluate what happened, which may be important to the health of the more seriously injured...

 

[Steve]

Below is what I wrote in a past thread, and I have seen nothing to change my mind since. I hope you guys don't mind that I recycled my old post.

When money falls from the skies and we can afford to paint the light poles with gold flecks and pixie dust, I'm all for strapping the kids into a bus. However, if there is a fixed amount of public money available for improvements that will prevent juvenile death (and there is in my community, if not yours), I'd prefer that the money is spent preventing as many juvenile deaths as possible. Dropping a few hundred grand to save, maybe, 1 kid over the 20 year or so life of a fleet of school busses is asinine when that money could fund programs that actually address some real, physical hazard to childrens' safety.

If you look at the statistics, they just don't bear that out. In most school bus related injuries and almost every single fatality, the injury or death occurs either before or after the kid is on the bus. even when a bus is involved in an accident, there are rarely even serious injuries. They do happen, but just not very often. If you consider how many kids ride busses daily to and from school, it's about the safest thing they do each day.

As for the government, I am all for public funding of programs that help people. What I can't stand is the idea of public funding for a program that just makes people feel good about themselves... playacting and pretend. We have plenty of programs that don't actually make things better for people; rather, they make politicians feel good about themselves.

I went on to say that a child is MUCH safer in a school bus than in a car going to and from school, particularly if that car is being driven by a sibling or another child.

It's about real fears and phantom fears. Being struck by lightning, while possible, is a phantom fear. Some real concerns for child safety are addressing the safety of the kids while they wait for the bus at the bus stop and when they cross the streets after they get off the bus. Once again, the danger for the kids isn't riding on the bus. It's getting off the bus and walking home, particularly as they cross the street.

Or how about gun safety. We lose somewhere between 2k and 5k kids every year to gun related deaths. Check out the Centers For Disease Control National Center for Injury Prevention & Control website to find out how people ACTUALLY die each year in the USA and then let's start with the biggest number and work down. If someone is really, truly concerned about a child's safety, that seems to me to be the only way to go.

 

[chaos1551]

Well, this is a subject I first thought about the first time I rode a school bus. I thought about it as a kid does over the years and this is what I came up with:

The school bus is big, slow and yellow, and some have flashing lights on them. It's hard not to see them. Often times they are not struck.

Drivers have to have a special license (in all states I've lived in) in order to drive them, hence special training.

Busses are very heavy. In typical traffic accidents, I don't imagine there would be a lot of g-force inside of a school bus.

Regardless of any reasoning I could come up with, I just don't see school busses in accidents. I've heard of a couple in my entire life. But that's it.

Hence, I quit worrying about seatbelts in school busses. Seems like a waste of money. If we wanted to make it safer for children to ride a school bus without spending colossal amounts of money for miniscule return, how about we install those breathalizer ignitions on school busses?

 

[Steve]

There's also the egg carton concept... where the kids are actually pretty well protected in the bus, even in the unlikely situation that one is in an accident.

 

[jks9199]

A school bus has extensive safety features in place, and are designed to protect students in the case of an accident. It's not a guarantee, and the research I've seen can argue either way for adding seat belts. It would probably be a decent idea, especially in buses that travel at highway speeds, but kind of impractical on many runs. One of the strongest arguments is probably for the restraint it offers, whether or not there is an accident!

We do send a mixed message: kids must wear seatbelts in cars, but then we'll pile 25 or 30 of 'em together in a school bus, and they don't have to?

 

[Jenny_in_Chico]

Or how about gun safety. We lose somewhere between 2k and 5k kids every year to gun related deaths. Check out the Centers For Disease Control National Center for Injury Prevention & Control website to find out how people ACTUALLY die each year in the USA and then let's start with the biggest number and work down. If someone is really, truly concerned about a child's safety, that seems to me to be the only way to go.

Steve, can you clarify where you got those numbers? I went to the website you posted, and looked at the number of deaths for kids in the US in each age bracket (1-4 yrs, 5-9 yrs, 10-14 yrs). I chose to look at all the data for 2006, which is the most recent year for which they have posted data. In all 3 age brackets combined, fewer than 100 children were killed by firearms. By FAR the biggest number in all 3 age brackets was motor vehicle death, with something like 40-50% of all deaths attributed to car accidents. Am I missing something here?

 

[Jenny_in_Chico]

Wait, never mind...I was reviewing the leading cause of death data, and failing to add in homicide data to the unintentional injury data. However, in 2006, only 409 children between the ages of 0-14 were killed by firearms.

 

[Steve]

Steve, can you clarify where you got those numbers? I went to the website you posted, and looked at the number of deaths for kids in the US in each age bracket (1-4 yrs, 5-9 yrs, 10-14 yrs). I chose to look at all the data for 2006, which is the most recent year for which they have posted data. In all 3 age brackets combined, fewer than 100 children were killed by firearms. By FAR the biggest number in all 3 age brackets was motor vehicle death, with something like 40-50% of all deaths attributed to car accidents. Am I missing something here?

"All intents", which includes undetermined, homicide, etc.

Cause or mechanism of death: Firearm

And I used a custom age range of >1 to 18. Every year from 2000 through 2006 had over 2k deaths from firearms, totalling over 15k in that period. And to be fair, you'd also have to compare the percentage of kids who are around guns vs the number who ride school busses every day.

To be clear, I'm not trying to steer the conversation to gun control. My point is that if we're looking to get bang for our tax bucks, let's look at how kids are being killed and fix THAT. This is particularly true if the price tag is high. Of course, if there's something cheap and easy that we can do to prevent deaths, I'm all for it. Retrofitting seat belts into school busses, however, isn't cheap.

I don't have a ton of time to find government stats on school bus mortality, but I did run across this article that addresses what we're talking about here. 1450 deaths in school bus related accidents since 1990. Of those, 9% were passengers on the bus. So, since 1990, less than 145 deaths.

 

[Jenny_in_Chico]

"All intents", which includes undetermined, homicide, etc.

Cause or mechanism of death: Firearm

And I used a custom age range of >1 to 18. Every year from 2000 through 2006 had over 2k deaths from firearms, totalling over 15k in that period. And to be fair, you'd also have to compare the percentage of kids who are around guns vs the number who ride school busses every day.

It appears that once the kids start roaming the streets like little undereducated animals, their chances of getting shot and killed rise dramatically. What a surprise!

 

[Steve]

It appears that once the kids start roaming the streets like little undereducated animals, their chances of getting shot and killed rise dramatically. What a surprise!

As I said, the point isn't to pick on gun control. It's to point out that the statistical likelihood that a kid will be killed on a school bus is exceedingly low... less than 1/3rd of 1% of all traffic fatalities.