Should seat belts be mandatory on school buses?

NEA Today, Oct 1998 by Hill, Ozzie Jr, Moore, Debbie

Yes

As a school bus driver, my job is to see to it that children go from home to school and school to home as safely as possible. 1 can do that job best when I'm driving a well-maintained school bus, equipped with seat belts for every child.

I drive a school bus for preschoolers that's equipped with seat belts and car seats. In North Carolina, threeyear-olds riding the bus to preschool sit in a secured car seat. Four- and five-year-olds riding the bus to preschool wear seat belts, too.

I like to think that riding on my bus is one of the most constructive, daily safety lessons that many of these preschoolers will ever have.

I teach my young riders that they must always buckle up while riding in a bus, car, or plane. That's a terrific message to send to so many kids at such an early age.

But I worry that all this great training is for naught.

When these kids reach the age of six, they no longer have to wear their seat belts. In fact, the buses they ride to elementary school don't even have seat belts. Where's the consistency here? What kind of message are we sending?

A school bus is long and deep. A major accident can cause children to be tossed from one end of the bus to the other. So can braking for a stray animal, swerving to avoid an obstacle in the road, or simply stopping short.

We all know that seat belts are intended to keep people in their seats, to prevent the kind of injuries that might result when kids are tossed around like salad. And we know that seat belts keep kids from standing or jumping up and distracting the driver. So what are we waiting for?

Some say it's human nature to wait for tragedy to strike before making unpleasant change. It took a long time to mandate bike helmets, for example. And it can take forever to get a stop light at a busy intersection.

But we don't have forever. We're talking about children and safety. Truth be told, parents, educators, and lawmakers should have insisted years ago that school buses be equipped with seat belts.

Some say the cost of putting seat belts on every single American school bus is just too high. But the cost of maintaining the status quo could be higher.

If one child's life can be saved, if one child can be spared from injury, then it will have been well worth the cost of installation.

I used to be against seat belts. But, as the laws became tougher, I settled down-and buckled up. Now I feel uneasy and unsafe without one wrapped around me.

When I forget to put my seat belt on, my own children remind me. Fastening seat belts is second nature to them now. And that's how it should be.

Kids are learning, but we need to do our part, too. We need to model correct behavior. We need to drive as carefully as we can-and we need to make sure other drivers know how to drive safely when school buses are in their midst.

We need to teach students how to get on and off our buses safely. And we need to do whatever it takes to get seat belts on our buses. I don't want my charges-or yours-to be the ones who could have been saved, if only they'd been wearing their seat belts.

School buses don't have seat belts for good reasons. They're unnecessary, and worse, they're hazardous.

School buses are designed specifically for safety:

The body of the bus is made of layers of reinforced steel, forming a protective cage around the passengers.

The floor of the bus is raised so that, in the event of a collision, most vehicles would strike the bus underneath the actual student seating area.

The fuel tank is enclosed with a steel cage, and the seats are covered in flame-resistant kevlar.

Side windows, roof hatches, emergency doors, and pop-out windows offer numerous emergency exits.

But the best protection for school bus riders is the bus's internal "compartmentalization" design.

Bus seats have high backs and are placed close together at an angle. If there's a sudden stop or impact, students slide forward, and their chests and abdomens hit the seat in front of them. If the students on the bus are wearing lap belts, their foreheads hit the seat in front of them, transferring the force to their spinal columns, and causing more serious injuries.

School buses designed for maximum safety don't need seat belts-and most drivers don't want them. Why? Most drivers think seat belts on buses pose a significant safety hazard.

First, a seat belt can be a deadly weapon. The buckle can be used to strike another person. The belt itself

No

can be used to choke someone.

Second, in the event of an accident, seat belts can trap students on board. Fires can engulf buses in flames and smoke in roughly three minutes. The delay in unbuckling a jammed seat belt could be the difference between life and death.

Not only could small fingers have problems unbuckling in an emergency, but dangling seat belts could become a danger to exiting students, causing them to trip.

Third, it would be nearly impossible for bus drivers to make sure that all students are buckled up properly at all times. The special needs students on the bus I drive now wear their seat belts so loosely that, in the event of an accident, the kids would slide out, and the seat belts would wind up around their necks.