Bus Seat Belt Debate

Approximately 400,000 yellow school buses serve American elementary and high school students. In all, about 22.5 million school-age children ride yellow school buses to and from school. After-school activities provide an estimated 5 million additional daily student rides. The American Public Transit Association also estimates that public transportation provides an additional 900 million student rides per year. This makes school transportation the single largest system of public transportation in the United States, resulting in over 94.2 billion total pupil-passenger miles per year.

With last week's school bus accident on highway 2 East of Shelby, the debate of seat belts in school buses is heating up in our area. It's not a new debate, it's been discussed for a number of years and several states have seat belt laws for school buses. On March 5th of last year ABC News carried a article called "To Buckle or Not to Buckle: Debate over Seat Belts on Buses Heats Up".

Doesn't it just make sense to have a seat belt in the bus?  Well, not necessarily.  The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration argues that seat belts aren't the most effective way to protect passengers on school buses.  Instead, the big yellow beasts employ something called "compartmentalization".

Think back to your days on the good ol' school bus.  Remember how those rigid green seats were wedged closer together than on even the cheapest no-frills airline?   That's compartmentalization in action.  Sitting in "strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing high seat backs," passengers are effectively protected from crashes.  Of course, the method can' prevent all injuries, but the NHTSA argues it is the best possible solution.  Several studies have shown seats belts would provide "little, if any, added protection.

Plenty of people feel that seat belts should be mandatory on school buses.  The National Coalition for School Bus Safety believes compartmentalization doesn't protect against "read-end, lateral and rollover collisions." And they contend that seat belts are affordable, even for cash-strapped school districts.