The article is nearly 15 years old. Cecil wrote: “…although only New York and New Jersey currently require them.” Do we have any updated statistics? Specifically comparing injuries (including from passengers hitting people with the seatbelt latches, or getting hit in the head with loose latchers in a wreck) and fatalities in New Your and New Jersey (and any other states that require them) versus states that don’t have them?
Then there’s the obvious missing bit in the reasons not to have seatbelts on school buses: because there are also school children on school buses. Short buses have seat belts. I rode on a short bus in grade school. Seatbelt fights were a constant thing. And those things HURT.
The NTSB has pushed for installation of seat belts on buses, but the requirement wasn’t mandated so it’s left up to local agencies to decide how they want to proceed.
At my childs school in Melbourne, Australia, the parents voted a couple of years ago to use seat belts on school trips.
In Australia, schools use a normal bus. There is no such thing as a school bus. For school trips, you normally get a large bus, called a ‘coach’ with underfloor storage, more seats, and no standing room. Deciding to use seat belts means that only a bus (‘coach’) equipped with seatbelts may be used, so it is slightly more expensive, you can’t seat 3 to a seat, and you may have to wait to book the bus because of availability.
That’s always been my major concern about putting seatbelts on school buses: violence between passengers and the belts becoming weapons. Not sure how one would solve that problem, but if it could be solved, I think seatbelts would be a good idea.
The only real problem with seat belts has existed since their installation. That problem is getting passengers to use them.
For passenger cars, ‘click it or ticket’ is a well-known campaign. For school buses, one driver and (often) more than twenty passengers, who’s to police the scofflaws?
That is a good point, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say “the ONLY” (emphasis added) problem. 