My first thought was that in case of an accident, a bus probably would recieve much damage, but all a bus would need to do is stop short on a highway and everyone (except, ironically, for the bus driver who has a seat belt on) would go flying! What gives?
Are you talking about long-distance buses? They have seat belts here in Australia.
Cecil doesn’t mention one thing because he is too old to remember. Like other humans (but in a different way), many adolescents are nasty little social deviant creatures. Seat belts on school buses would be used as torture devices in several ways. The metal buckles make a convenient weapon and the belts themselves can be used to restrain or strangle someone else. Before you scoff, I have had the opportunity to be around groups of kids in the middle-school age range recently and it all came flooding back about what a different, cruel little world that was. I am not saying kids would get strangled daily on school buses but the things are spartan for a reason and the accident risks themselves are so low that the cure may so a bigger blip of incidents than the supposed problem.
Cecil also does not mention that this allows the school district to cram 3 kids to a seat clearly designed for 2. This saves money by needing less buses - until someone gets killed and the parents sue. This apparently is considered to be an acceptable risk.
My daughter is in kindergarten. She comes home on the bus. She always wears a seatbelt as do all the other children on the bus. It is a regular sized standard yellow school bus. I don’t know if they make the older kids wear seatbelts.
I wasn’t talk specifically about school buses, just buses in general. If there’s such low risk, why does the driver wear one?
In Ireland, schoolbuses are legally required to have them,after an accident where five schoolgirls died when belts would likely have saved them. We also ended the " 3 in 2 seats" arrangement mentioned earlier, essentially because it makes the seatbelt requirement unworkable.
On why general-purpose buses don’t have them :- I’m not sure, other than the observation that I can recall only one other fatal accident involving Irish buses, and there the people killed were outside the bus.
http://direct.rte.ie/news/2004/0221/dublin.html
Fatal bus crashes do occur. Most of the ones I recall are roll over accidents. Just the type of accident that you would probably be more likely to survive if strapped down.
In Norway all new buses have seatbelts, and the law states that if the bus has belts, you’re required to wear them. (All long distance buses have had seatbelts for several years, even inter-city busses are starting to get them)
That being said, there is still a lot of busses allowing people to stand in the aisle. That must be a death toll waiting to happend…
When I was a kid in elementary school we always practiced “leaving the bus quickly in case of an emergency” - that is, getting kids comfortable with jumping out the back door.
I remember being told that seat belts would hamper the ability to get everyone out as quick as possible. Little kids might not have the strength/ability to get themselves unbuckled and the bus driver wouldn’t have time to do it for them.
Now that I think of it, though, I can’t think of too many situations where getting out of the bus quickly via the back door would be the best thing to do.
IIRC, National PTA has the following reasons why they do not support seatbelt use on school buses:
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The driver might not be able to assist all the children in freeing themselves in an accident, especially if there is a fire.
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Any buses that pass bodies of water (rivers, lakes) could put the kids in grave danger in the event of a water accident in which the kids are trapped and buckled in their seat with one adult (the driver) to free them all.
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The seatbelts could be used as weapons (the buckle as a blunt object and the straps in choking, especially for older kids).
Also, the tall seats are meant to act as collison protection in an accident, although not for roll-overs. There is also the issue of enforcement- who will ensure everyone is buckled and stays buckled- the driver? a monitor?
I can’t speak for city buses, but for school buses the NAtional PTA has some very reasonable objections. I, for one, was swayed by their arguments.
This question was recently raised in Alabama after the November school bus crash in Huntsville that killed four high school students. The bus went over a concrete wall on an elevated section of interstate and crashed nose-first into the ground about 30 feet below. The bus driver was not wearing his seat belt and was apparently ejected from the bus onto the interstate before the bus fell.
Here’s the whole collection of articles about the crash, and here are a few specific ones from that collection:
Crash may rekindle debate over seat belts on buses
“Don’t know what impact seat belts would have had”
Bus belt debate - no easy answer
IvoryTowerDenizen has it correct. So did Cecil (of course). Both though are incomplete.
Many sawgrass seasons ago I owned a fleet (50 or so) of the yellow-and-black school versions in a major metropolitan center. It seemed I was called upon by the media to discuss or debate the issue every time there was any kind of school bus accident anywhere in the world. The facts have not changed significantly since then.
NOTE here that the discussion below does not apply to transit buses (city bus type) or long distance coaches (famous speedy dog type). The construction standards for these are much more auto-like than schoolbus-like.
School buses are built with different construction standards than autos-- side beams, floor beams, etc. all designed for protection. High back seats too, fully padded and crammed seemingly ‘too close together’ are also designed to hold children in place and cushion them for those critical milliseconds.
Aside- the lateral seat space for each student (complained about in several posts) is referred to as ‘butt space’ (fittingly enough) and was calculated from some obscure and arcane median measurement of typical school children. Generally it translates to 13 inches. I agree there is an economic element in this (more kids less seats) but for much school usage it actually works fairly well.
In a rather often cited (sorry, I can’t find it now!) “Canada Study”, identical school buses with and without seatbelts were subjected to head on collisions. The dummies in the “un” bus suffered little significant injury, presumably because the entire body was forced into the padded seat in front of it, spreading out the force of impact. This is assumed to confirm the validity of the “compartmentalization” approach to school bus design. The belted dummies suffered severe head and neck trauma, since they pivoted on the lap belts and only the head impacted the seat in front, concentrating the force.
A final and commonly overlooked point is that no commercial American school bus manufacturer ‘designs in’ any attachment points for the belts. Literally every other aspect of school bus manufacture is rigorously designed and tested, and there are Federal standards issued. School districts that have mandated retrofit installation of seat belts just screw them or bolt them to convenient spots on the floor or seat stanchions. In doing so they are assuming a significant liability. An injured student (parents or estate) could probably sue successfully by arguing that the installation of the belts was never part of the bus design, thus the use of the belt contributed to the injury/death.
My three daughters all rode school buses. While I could easily have added seat belts, I did not. In my personal judgement, their benefits are heavily outweighed by their faults.
My name and Cecil’s in the same breath… sigh 
. Can I put this on my Cv?
Maybe because most people are riding the bus for a short time (an hour or less), but the driver is in the vehicle all day?
There’s a lot of controversy about this (and has been for a long time). Some experts say they’re more dangerous than no seat belts. My son’s bus was broad-sided by a semi when he was little. No serious injuries, but I asked why they didn’t have seatbelts and no one could provide me with a reasonable explanation.
Padded seat backs seem to be the alternate safety measure.
Presently I’m working on a lawsuit arising out of an intercity coach rollover. A quick summary is that there are a lot of experts loaded to the gills with studies indicating that seat belts would reduce injuries and save lives. There are significantly fewer experts saying that seat belts would not reduce injuries and would not save lives, and these studies usually focus on secondary issues such as how to ensure that seat belts would be properly fitted and not left flapping about so as to not cause injury. The bus manufacturers and bus lines are able to point out that even without seatbelts, travelling by coach is very safe when compared to travelling by car, and that installing seat belts would be very expensive (bear in mind that there is a lot more to it than simply slapping in a seat belt – frame and seat modifications usually would have to be made).
Having waded through a pile of rollover reports, and a pile of studies on the use of seat belts in intercity coaches, I am firmly on the side of seat belts.
There was a very nasty bus crash near London recently. It was a tall bus that fell over sideways and slid. The upshot of the investigation was that the people wearing their seatbelts (in the minority) stayed put, while the rest of them fell out of the bus, a) injuring some of those wearing their seatbelts, and b) fell out of the smashed windows, while having their limbs severed.
I travel 4 hours a day on a long-distance bus, and I always wear my belt. It’s also a legal requirement here.
Didn’t know that. However, I do always wear one on coach trips across half of Europe (with a bunch of kids in tow), ever since I grew too tall/pudgy to curl up comfortably and sleep on a double seat. Having 29" legs, I find it’s easier to sit comfortably in both coach and airplane seats when I’ve got a belt on.
It’s probably worth pointing out that we’re talking about retractable lap belts here, not three-point ones, which removes the ‘belts flapping around injuring people’. The only car I have ever experienced where the belts didn’t retract is the Morris Minor sat rusting in the garage here. Sounds like a non-argument to me.