Why no seat belts on school buses?
Ever since they were old enough to emerge from their safety seats, children have been strapping themselves into seat belts with shoulder harnesses every time they get into the family car. It’s the law, after all. And the reason for that legal requirement is obvious: seat belts save lives.
Unrestrained passengers can be thrown out of vehicles in a crash or be fatally injured by being tossed about inside the vehicle’s compartment.
Yet, when children climb aboard most school buses, they are on holiday from restraint. Why is that?
A typical school bus can transport 72 children. When they are two or three to a seat, standing up, turning around, switching seats, horsing around, what happens when that bus is, for example broadsided by a truck and rolled over? Here’s a way to think of it: Put a handful of marbles in a glass jar and give it a good shake.
Earlier this week, the head of the National Highway Safety Administration said data shows safety belts on buses would reduce injuries and death. Administrator Mark Rosekind said the agency will use every tool at its disposal to get three-point seat belts (lap belts and shoulder harnesses) in all of the nation’s school buses. Chances are, he’ll need a lot of tools and a lot of time to get that done.
An average of four children are killed and 7,200 injured annually in school bus crashes, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Some school districts have begun mandating seat belts in school buses, and some state legislatures have acted to provide money toward their installation, but not in Pennsylvania. Only in small buses that are more like vans are seat belts required by law.
So what is stopping the 19 school districts in Washington and Greene counties from requiring seat belts in school buses? Mainly, it’s a matter of money.
School Transportation News, an industry publication, estimates retrofitting a 68-78-passenger bus with three-point belts would cost between $10,000 and $15,000, and that additional maintenance might amount to $500 per year per bus. On new buses costing about $60,000, lap belts would mean an additional $1,500 to $3,000 cost, and three-point belts an additional $7,000 to $16,000.
That is a lot of money. For a larger school district the size, for example, of Canon-McMillan with a fleet of 60 buses, retrofitting all those buses would amount to $600,000 to $900,000.
With so many budget constraints, school directors are reluctant to dish out that kind of money on something not required by law. However, they are willing to spend lots of money on surveillance cameras, police officers, security systems and other hardware to combat a possible attack by a mentally-deranged gunman. A far more likely scenario than an armed maniac on school grounds is a school bus being T-boned by a dump truck.
There are other arguments against installing seat belts on buses. Granted, the buses are built to withstand crashes and keep occupants from being ejected. Some point out that seat belts might prevent a quick evacuation of the bus in an emergency. Drivers might find it difficult to enforce seat-belt use. But other positions against the use of belts on school buses are the same lame arguments against using belts in cars.
It’s really all about the money. School boards find it much easier to raise taxes and spend $1 million or more on, for example, new artificial turf for a football field than to make traveling to and from school safer.
And oddly enough, as safety-conscious as parents are today, they’ve gone along with those decisions.
It’s all a matter of priority.