My daughter will be starting kindergarten soon. As this will include her first experience with riding the school bus, I recently took her to a “school bus orientation” offered by the town. I was surprised to see that the busses still do not have seatbelts. I say ‘still’ because I remember that they did not have them when I was riding the bus. But, in this day and age with all of the seatbelt laws and much higher degree of concern for children’s safety while riding in motor vehicles, I was surprised.
So what’s the rationale for not putting seatbelts in school busses?
This is only something I was told by a school bus driver, so YMMV.
Imagine a scenario where a fire starts at the front end of the bus. We grown-ups do not in fact do so well with unbuckling a seat belt in an emergency situation. I imagine such a scenario with 75 six- through ten-year-olds locked into the seats, while the fire rages through the bus, would be fairly nigh hopeless.
So maybe the risk of death from a fire (with seatbelts) outweighs the risk of injury from a crash (without seatbelts).
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, they haven’t recommended the installation of seatbelts on school buses (BTW, “busses” are kisses, not the plural of “bus”) because school buses are already the safest vehicles on the road (VERY low fatality rates), and because the available evidence does not demonstrate that seat belts would improve the safety at all.
Obligatory Cecil link. – Cecil came to the same conclusions that the NHTSA did in Early Out’s link: At eleven fatalities a year due to school buses, and at a cost of $800 million (1998) to outfit all existant school buses with seatbelts that have perhaps questionable ability to prevent the already miniscule casualties, it becomes a question of how low can the numbers drop, and how else could we spend the money.
The logistics are a nightmare. How do you make sure the kids have all buckled up? How do you make sure they don’t unbuckle the second your back is turn? How do you keep from someone smashing the buckle into another kid’s teeth?
Gotta nitpick, if only because I personally choose the use the non-standard spelling. Any time I see “buses” I think “byoozus” – and that just ain’t right.
Seatbelts are required by some states, as are higher seat backs (to help against whiplash) - It is a local call, and there are some differences of opinion between the states as to what the best mix of equipment should be.
Usually, regulations and laws grandfather already built buses - for examples, some states require two stop arms (front and rear), as opposed to just the one in front. So if your bus company or district has older buses (they are not cheap), they might not simply have been equipped with belts.
High school kids never wear seat belts, middle school kids never wear seat belts, elementary school kids usually do wear seat belts. You can get up and check, but the little bastards can simply unclick them as soon as you get back to your seat. Plus they have attitudes about it - who the hell are you to challange them, some stupid bus driver? Their dads are lawyers or they are going to be rock or rap stars, yadda yadda yadda. I have never seen an adult on a school bus charter fasten their seat belt, unless they were elementary school teachers with their pupils. Middle school kids are the worse behaved by the way - just a mindless bit of gospel truth.
Even the elementary school kids circumvent the belt requirement by making them as loose as possible - to the point where they could stand up and cross the aisle if they wanted.
They build school buses to be as close to an armored personnel carrier that they can, without restraints of weight, size and price. I was once rear ended by a truck where the truck was totaled and only the lenses on my tail lights were broken. Add the specialized training a driver is supposed to get at least, the high visibility chrome yellow and lights, and the reluctance of most of the kids to actually wear the belts I can see why some places don’t bother. But if the bus were to be overturned, T-boned or something like that, the belts - if used - would sure as hell be useful.
An improperly-worn seatbelt can be dangerous… if it’s around the abdomen instead of the hips, for example, or if (as the previous poster mentioned) a kid is wearing it so loosely that they can get up and walk around while still looped in. I wonder if there would be more injuries if there <i>were</i> seatbelts on schoolbuses, just because it’s impossible to make sure everyone’s wearing them properly (unlike when you’re in the station wagon and you can threaten to turn the car around if the horseplay doesn’t stop).
I know when I was a kid we used to get the stuffing out of the seats to fling at each other. If there were seatbelts I’d imagine there would have been quite a few buckles-to-teeth and strangling injuries.
I’m picturing a school bus with a seat-belt system that wouldn’t let the driver proceed unless all of the seatbelts were properly fastened. Now I’m picturing that bus full of 70 middle-schoolers, half of which have a first-period test that they don’t really want to take…
Actually, I believe all school buses DO have seatbelts, though I could be wrong. The thing is, bus seats being the cheap-ass things that they are, the belts are almost ALWAYS jammed under the seats, out of sight. Not that it matters anyway – nobody wears a seatbelt on a school bus. Why? Well, school buses are huge, and aren’t likely to jolt to a sudden stop unless they hit something really solid, like a wall. I’d warrant there are precious few injuries every year of riders on buses, even with seatbelt wearage at near zilch. Not that it wouldn’t be a good idea for all to wear the belts, but when I rode a bus for years and nobody ever wore the belts. And I’m not talking 20 years ago, either – this was fairly recently.