Yesterday I shared an interview in which the head of the National Transportation Safety Board spoke largely in favor of seat belts in school buses. Parents have been calling for the addition of seat belts for years and some recent accidents have renewed efforts to enact regulations which would mandate belts in school buses.
So why don’t many states require seat belts in their school buses? There are actually a few reasons many transportation experts are against adding the belts in school buses.
School buses are designed to be as safe as possible for students on board, and it is entirely possible adding seat belts could make the vehicle less safe for children onboard during the most common bus accidents.
“This is because compartmentalization — high-backed seats that are padded and closely spaced together — protects passengers in a crash,” Roxane Marchard, senior media advisor for Transport Canada, told The Globe and Mail.
Some estimates claim children are as much as 50 times more likely to get to school safe if they take the bus than riding to school in a family car. Much of that estimate is because school buses are involved in fewer accidents, but David Carroll, Legislation and Safety Consultant to the Ontario School Bus Association (OSBA), says there are also fewer injuries when there is a crash.
“They’re highly visible and we have more skilled and better trained drivers,” Carroll said. “And you have a vehicle that sits higher than other traffic — when most vehicles hit a school bus, they collide below the floor line.”
Compartmentalization is extraordinarily effective if a bus is hit from the front or rear. The individual compartments created by the specifically spaced seating protects children like eggs in a carton.
“It doesn’t require students to do anything other than sit in the seat with their legs ahead of them and not in the aisle,” he said. “There’s not a lot of room between seats and that’s to reduce acceleration in a collision. But that only works as long as kids stay in the compartment — so it’s a problem if the bus rolls over. And it’s doesn’t necessarily protect from a side impact,” Carroll conceded.
But why wouldn’t seat belts make children even safer? When seat belts are added into school buses, the seats have to be redesigned to include a stiffer back to support the children. This compromises the effect of compartmentalization.
“With firmer seat backs, you no longer have the same protection in that compartment,” Carroll said. “So any kids who aren’t wearing seat belts won’t be as protected in a crash as they are now.”
On top of that, seat belts also add the new chore of ensuring children are actually wearing the seat belts and that the belts are properly adjusted.
“It’s possible to have a panel of lights that shows who’s not wearing their belts, but that would contribute to driver distraction,” Carroll explained. “You could have an aide on each bus — but money for all this has to come from somewhere, so you might end up with fewer school buses on the roads and some kids left taking less safe ways to get to school.”
Both Transport Canada and the National Transportation Safety Board support the use of three-point lap-shoulder belts if schools decide to install belts, but the issue is not as black and white as it may seem on the surface. Seat belts may help in some crashes, but it is possible it may negatively impact the outcome of other dangerous situations.
