Just thinking..... - about school buses

mammag wrote: I was driving the kids to school this morning and my daughter asked why there are no seatbelts in school. It got me thinking. Why is it a state law that you must buckle your seatbelt and yet they still don't have seatbelts in the school buses. Actually, the driver does have a seat belt just not all the children. Does this not make sense to anyone else??? Is there a particular safety reason that they don't?

TANNER'S MOM replied: Girl, I have had this thought a 100 times. My son's boss was in a minor accident this year..upon inspecting it ..it was deemed unsafe. They got a brand new 2005 model. Tanner came home talking about it..It has a new..get this CD PLAYER..and I said well does it have seatbelts..NOPE just for the driver..

Something ain't right there!

GavinsMommy replied: I can't remember who told me this...but I'm certain it's not true and that they were just full of it... :-D

They told me that it's because most children wouldn't buckle up so if a wreck occurred and half the children died bc they weren't buckled up and the other half lived bc they were, then there would be a huge lawsuit...so basically it's about money.

No idea though, I don't think that's true at all...but who knows.

GavinsMommy replied: I just found this...haven't read it yet, but it seems to give the answer

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/bus...atbelt.hmp.html

maestra replied: There are actually busses with seatbelts. It just depends if your district is cheap or not. We have some newer busses with seatbelts.

I think that one of the problems is that the belts seem to come two to a seat, and the districts like to cram three children in each of those seats. Can't have two getting a seatbelt, and one not- that would definately be a lawsuit!

GavinsMommy replied: So my question, after reading that article, is...if they aren't beneficial, then why does the bus driver get one??

Becky74 replied: I did not read the article, but I believe that the height of the seats help in reducing the number of injuries to the students, add that to the time it would take the bus driver to ensure all the children were buckled in and then again if an accident happened the time it would take to get all the children out. The driver gets a seatbelt because there is nothing between him and the outside of the bus but a windshield.

I wish there were seatbelts in every bus, but I have to agree that the lawsuits would be outrageous, a kid unbuckles and the bus gets into an accident, can you imagine the ramifications on the school bus company? Add that to the fact that there is no funding for the busing of kids....

jcc64 replied: I think it's a state by state thing. The buses in our district do have seatbelts (and trust me, these are not new buses nor is my district a free spending one), but my kids report that no one uses them b/c it would require them to be buckled together, and the driver has no way of knowing whether they're using them or not. Of course, I'm sure the technology exists that would allow the driver to know this w/o having to actually see it first hand, but it would be expensive, and children's issues are not a top priority to our elected officials.

mammag replied: Thanks for the link!

I can see that the other seats would help for a normal collision but what about the case where the bus fell over and all the kids went crashing around the bus. I forget the particulars on this accident but they kept showing it on the news and it was frightening.

I think there has to be some way around the legalities of it. Couldn't someone file a lawsuit if their child died on the school bus anyway stating that it is a state law they didn't comply with or is there an exception in the law for school buses?

I always see kids getting up walking around the school bus while it is driving and it seems like that would at least stop that. The other seats aren't doing them any good if they are up out of their seats and get thrown down the aisle.

I also would think that they could make them available in the new models so at least the kids that want to be buckled could be. Have parents sign a waiver or something if you are worried about lawsuits.

jcc64 replied:

Tort reform and the elimination of "frivolous" lawsuits is a favorite subject of Pres Bush and his disciples in Congress. He spoke about it ad nauseum during the debates. Hate to always steer our conversations into politics, but it is situations just as the one we are discussing that illuminate the very obvious fact that our gov't has put the interests of large corporations far ahead of you and your family.
Sorry to sound like such a liberal!

mammag replied: Jeanne!!!

You're right though. It's time to get started on those tort reforms he talked about.

Kaitlin'smom replied: I always wondered that as a kid but I see both sides, kids dont want to and if the drives is deemed responsible to make sure they do then no one would want to drive school busses, so if no one but the driver has then then they are kinda off the hook. Also I have not seen our public busses with seat belts....hummm

jolene555 replied: I love that someone finally brought this up. I did research on this while in highschool - a lowly bus-riding freshman as I was. I came up with the same information - that school buses are some of the safest vehicles there are. If there were seatbelts I doubt they'd be used. The bus driver would be forced to go around, making sure everyone was belted, costing more time and more money. I think it's best to make the bus, itself, more safe and sturdy so our children inside are safe no matter what.

And I've seen the tape, too, where all the kids are tossed to the top/side of the bus when it tips over. Granted, it's disturbing, but as I recall none of those kids suffered more than a scratch. Can you imagine the internal damage to a child who, perhaps along with his 2 seatmates, was hung sideways from a lapbelt? When our passenger vehicles tip and we're belted, we also have the luxury of being tightly enclosed, with airbags and the whole works. Sadly those kids are better off getting tossed than restrained by a strap of nylon.

lovemyboy replied: Oh my gosh. I remember when I was little they had two front seats that had seatbelts but they were reserved for the "bad" kids. Or you know, when you got in trouble. It was so bad back than. When it was your birthday the bus driver would let us drive. (On his lap) Weird I know!! But when I was little I was like woo-hoo! Also several bus drivers would let us ride in the stair well by the door until we got to our stop.

I think I will be driving my kids to and from school!! This wasn't even that long ago as I just turned 21!

redchief replied: The NTSB regulates equipment required on all vehicles. States may extend laws over and above that, but are hesitant to due to their absorbing liability to such decisions.

Having responded to motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) involving school buses, I have to say that all of the injuries i've treated have indeed been minor for the children on the buses (not so for those unlucky enough to have been the ones who hit the bus). Most of the accidents I've responded to were front or rear collisions. I only recall a side collision one time.

Much of the reason the NTSB doesn't require seatbelts is due to the mass of the school bus itself. In MVCs I've responded to there was no rapid deceleration as happens with passenger vehicles. In fact, the bus' mass and the time it took for it to stop was the reason that passengers in the vehicle the bus hit were so badly injured. There were a few complaints on the bus about stiff necks and sore arms, shoulders and legs. The children were all treated at a local hospital and released.

As I'm writing this I'm considering whether or not I advocate seat belts on the bus and I can't really come to a clear conclusion (my children are older and I worry about other things that go on on those buses).

Ensuring compliance with laws requiring seat belt wearing, unless there were electronic deadman switches in the buckle portions, would be impossible. Now our school buses have seatbelts and I know that there are differing rules in each local district regarding their use. My eldest daughter is in high school and reports that no one on the bus utilzes the seatbelts.

My elementary school aged daughter also has belts in the buses. Noone wears them and there's no rule that they must be worn in that district. I asked my eldest daughter how she would catagorize the seat belts in the buses (a good thing, a waste of money, a potential weapon) and she answered, "A waste of money."

In only one accident that I responded to were the children elementary school age. That also was a front/rear collision. There were no injuries on the bus and the injuries to the driver of the vehicle that hit them were minor, though required hospitalization.

I'm still trying to weigh in on this. I can't come to any conclusion, professionally, that there would be less injuries to riders. The school buses faired very well in all the accidents I responded to, and two of those were high speed impacts. The vehicles striking the buses in most cases, were destroyed. One of the districts in our area requires that the students be belted, but the veiled primary reason: to keep the kids from moving around on the bus.

School bus drivers are not in the passenger compartment and, thus, not protected by the compartmentalized design of the bus, therefore seatbelts are mandatory. My son stated that though his buses had belts, they were more often used as pranks on the other boarders (kids liked to fasten the belts across the aisles to create tripping hazards - fun stuff).

More important to me than this issue I think is school bus drivers' seeming indifference to posted speed limits. I rarely come across a bus on the roadway that isn't exceeding the speed limit.