A fatal accident involving two Missouri school buses is renewing debate over whether federal authorities should require seat belts in the vehicles.
A 15-year-old girl in one of the buses was killed and 50 other students were injured Thursday, when two buses slammed into a pick-up and another truck that had collided in front of them. The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate whether seat belts might have helped prevent injuries, The Associated Press reports.
There is no federal requirement for seat belts in school buses, which have a much better safety record than cars, AOL News reports. An average of five children are killed and 5,500 are injured in school bus accidents each year, national statistics show. According to a 1998 analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, only 8 percent of people who died in accidents involving school buses were riding in them.
“A child in a school bus — even those that have no seat belts whatsoever — is still eight times safer than the one that rides to and from school in the family car,” Keith Henry, a board member at the National Association of Pupil Transportation, a school bus industry group, told AOL News.
Dr. Alan Ross, president of the National Coalition for School Bus Safety, says claims about school bus safety are based on flawed and outdated data. He cited a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that 17,000 kids head to the ER per year with injuries from bus accidents.
“Adding seat belts is a no-brainer,” Ross told AOL News. “But we’re letting politics and economics stand in the way of something much more important — the safety of children.”
Only six states require school buses to have seat belts: New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Texas and Louisiana.
The NHTSA does require seat belts in smaller buses that weigh 10,000 pounds or less, but not in full-size buses.
There comes a point where the seemingly “right” thing to do, in the alleged name of safety, really is NOT the “right” thing to do in the big picture.
From viewing the photos posted of the I-44 school bus wreckage, it is obvious that the unfortunate teenage passenger was simply in the crush zone from where the trailing bus impacted her bus. No seatbelt in the world would have saved her – or anyone else – in that situation. Seatbelts for the pickup truck driver did him no good – nor bad.
People need to resist these knee-jerk reactions when it comes to advocating seat belt requirements for all school buses. Yes, this is a tragic situation and my heart and prayers go to those suffering families. This was also a freak accident caused by a series of driver errors. The statistics are clear in that school bus transportation is the safest mode of surface transportation, period, and that’s independent of seat belt usage.
My credentials extend back to 1983, when I became a volunteer firefighter, and first began to understand how a school bus is designed, how it functions, and how it behaves in various collision scenarios. I served nearly 24 years in the Fire Service, until I took my full retirement in 2007. I have participated in training drills (firefighting and extrication—so-called “Jaws of Life”) on actual school buses. Further, I have responded to two school bus fires during my career. In 2005, I started driving a school bus, and for the past two years, I have been a trainer, of both drivers and driver trainers.
While I understand the logic behind the motivation to equip school buses with seat belts, I also know that there is another side to the issue, a side that rarely receives sufficient attention. I wish to make three important points.
My first point addresses the responsibility for ensuring that all riders are using the seat belts properly. On whom would this responsibility fall? The obvious answer is the school bus driver, but then a second question arises: How can the driver fulfill this responsibility? The driver can walk the aisle of the bus to verify that the students are properly buckled in. But, then, should a student deliberately bypass the seat belt, by unbuckling and then re-buckling it behind him/her, the driver has no sure way to tell this has happened. Or, should a student pull the shoulder portion of the seat belt below the arm, thus disabling its function, the driver also may not be able to tell. This is because the seats on school buses are designed and constructed to be tall enough to protect students in a collision. The height of the seat design makes it nearly impossible for the driver to see how a seat belt is being used, in the overhead mirror. Keep in mind the driver must drive the bus in a safe manner, maintain order in the bus, and be aware of other traffic and road conditions, all at the same time we are now expecting him/her to monitor seat belt use. There simply is no adequate method in place to ensure compliance with the seat belt usage.
The second issue derives from the question, “How many seat belts would be required on any given bus?” The obvious answer is, “as many as there are seats on the bus.” However, very few buses load to capacity on any given route or trip. That means there would nearly always be unused belts on the bus. What is to prevent a student from pulling out the retracted belt to its full length, thus creating a 2-3’ swinging weapon with the metal buckle at its end. By installing seat belts in buses, we have, in effect, installed 36, or 60, or 72 (depending on seating size of the bus) weapons on each bus for the use of any ill-intentioned student on board. In addition to these “mace-like” swinging weapons, EVERY BELT can be pulled out far enough to be wrapped around the neck of a seated student, as a garrote, with which to choke that student. Given the stated logic that “if it saves even one life”, I would suggest that we would have the potential to save many, many lives by keeping these weapons out of the hands of students riding school buses.
My third topic has to do with the reason for seat belts in the first place, a collision. Let us examine the worst type of school bus collision, a roll-over. The design of a school bus makes it impossible for a school bus to “right itself” in a roll-over collision. Rather, the bus will come to a stop on its side. The bus, which is 8’ wide, has turned on its side and now has become 8’ high, inside. The aisle has “moved” from center and below the feet to halfway up one side of the turned-over bus. The driver must walk on the only clear path available, the windows on the “down” side of the bus. The driver will have to travel the length of the bus, unbuckling any student who may not be able reach his/her seatbelt, because of the position of the body in the turned-over seat. Half of the seats in the bus are now above the driver’s shoulders and head, because that 8’ width has become the 8’ height. Students hanging in the air and unable to release their seat belts will have to hang in them until the driver can work his/her way from front to back of the bus. How long will it take for a skilled and trained driver to release 15, 20, 30, or more seat belts, one at a time, AND catch each student as he/she drops out down onto the driver? I venture a guess of 3-5 minutes, minimum, and likely much longer. It takes less than 2 minutes for the atmosphere inside a burning bus to become toxic and deadly, and the inside will be completely engulfed in flames within 5-7 minutes. Even without the threat of fire, any student in the “high side” seats will fall 4-6 feet after releasing the seatbelt, down onto other students and glass shards from the broken windows on the “down” side of the bus.
A further complication to students hanging, upside down, in their seat belts, lies in the physiology of young children. Until about the age of 9-10, a child does not have sufficient musculature or skeletal strength to offset gravity while hanging in a seat belt. The child’s body is “top heavy”, and tends to turn further and further upside down as he/she hangs in the seat belt for longer and longer times. The child cannot right himself/herself, and the internal organs (stomach, liver, intestines) will be drawn by gravity tight against the child’s diaphragm. It becomes increasingly difficult for the child to inhale against the weight of the internal organs, and the distorted position of an upside down body. A child in such a position—with the added fear, confusion, and panic brought on by the collision—can pass out within 3-4 minutes, and can die of suffocation in less than 7 minutes.
In summary, there are valid reasons to believe that “seat belts save lives”. However, there are also valid proofs to show that truism is not universal in application. Given the statistics on current school bus collision safety, fatalities will almost certainly INCREASE, not decrease, with mandatory seat belt installation and use. Such is the unintended consequence of mandatory seatbelt installation and use in school buses. Please see that these additional views are inserted into the dialogue on this issue…perhaps as an open letter on your editorials page and a forward to all legislators contemplating action on this topic.