re: School bus should be required to have seatbelts

We should make all the kids wear helmets too.

According to NHTSA data, there have been a total of only 49 fatalities of occupants of a school bus between 2003-2012.

That number is astronomically low. You have better chances of hitting the lottery or being attacked by a shark than you do of dying as an occupant in a school bus related accident.

When I was a kid, our bus hit a car and kids went flying all over the bus. No one was seriously hurt, but they put seat belts in the bus after that.

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Pretty sure if your kid was one of the 49 you'd be raising hell to get them installed.

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Probably so, but it wouldn't change any facts.

One of my best friends is a teacher and bus driver. They have to sit through all of these training seminars and one of the things they address is the seat belt argument.

Basically, contrary to conventional thought - seat belts on a school bus make the likelihood of fatalities during an accident much higher for various reasons.

My 4 year old fastens and unfastens his seatbelt on his own. Are there really kids out there that can't perform this task? And I would imagine kids under the age of 4 aren't riding the bus, but I admit that I really have no clue.

Basically all of this:

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If cars have seat belts, why aren't they generally required in school buses? Because modern school buses are already remarkably safe, and because seat belts don't work the same way in buses as they do cars, research shows.

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Numerous federal and academic studies have concluded that school buses are the safest form of ground transportation of all, in fact. The National Safety Council says they're about 40 times safer than the family car.

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About 440,000 public school buses carry 24 million children more than 4.3 billion miles a year, but only about six children die each year in bus accidents, according to annual statistics compiled the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. About 800 children, by contrast, die every year walking, biking or being driven to school in cars or other passenger vehicles, said Ron Medford, the agency's deputy director.

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That's because designers of modern school buses don't trust squirmy children to use seat belts properly. Instead, they use a passive system called compartmentalization. Bus seats aren't packed so closely together just to maximize capacity (although that's one reason); they're spaced tightly and covered with 4-inch-thick foam to form a protective bubble.

In a crash, "the child will go against the seat, and that will absorb most of the impact," said John Hamilton, transportation director for the Jackson County, Fla., school board. "Plus, it's a safety device so that they won't be projecting through the air."

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Safety. Numerous safety agencies say seat belts aren't the best choice for children, which is why nearly all states require container-like full car seats for younger kids in passenger cars.

"Lap/shoulder belts can be misused and NHTSA's testing showed that serious neck injury and perhaps abdominal injury could result when lap/shoulder belts are misused,"

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Basically, seat belts (specifically their misuse or poor fitting by young children) create the possibility that all 49 of those children killed over the course of 8 years could have been killed in one accident.

I can see how misusing seat belts could hurt a kid but I have a hard time believing NOTHING is better than something.

Seat belts are not required in school buses because research by the Department of Transportation and others determined that compartmentalization was a better solution.

Under the compartmentalization concept, seat backs in school buses are made higher, wider and thicker than before. All metal surfaces are covered with foam padding. This structure must then pass rigid test requirements for absorbing energy, such as would be required if a child's body came in contact with the padded back. In addition, the equivalent of a seat back, called "barrier", is placed in front of the first seat at the front of the bus.
Some of the key arguments favoring compartmentalization over seat belts are as follows:
a. Compartmentalization is more manageable. The protective surfaces exist in place without depending on any action by the children or any extra special supervision by the drivers. Seat belts require discipline and supervision to keep them clean, unraveled and in use.
b. Compartmentalization works whether students have fully developed abdominal areas or not. Conventional seat belts, which are lap restraints only, are not suitable for small children whose abdominal area and bone structure are not adequately developed to take the force of a lap belt alone. They need the help of chest harnesses also, which adds to the complexity of a proper seat belt solution.
c. Compartmentalization, once it has done its energy-absorbing job, leaves the student free to escape the bus. Seat belts could leave students strapped in, upside down, perhaps unconscious, in burning or flooding buses.

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Seat belts are not required in school buses because research by the Department of Transportation and others determined that compartmentalization was a better solution.

Under the compartmentalization concept, seat backs in school buses are made higher, wider and thicker than before. All metal surfaces are covered with foam padding. This structure must then pass rigid test requirements for absorbing energy, such as would be required if a child's body came in contact with the padded back. In addition, the equivalent of a seat back, called "barrier", is placed in front of the first seat at the front of the bus.
Some of the key arguments favoring compartmentalization over seat belts are as follows:
a. Compartmentalization is more manageable. The protective surfaces exist in place without depending on any action by the children or any extra special supervision by the drivers. Seat belts require discipline and supervision to keep them clean, unraveled and in use.
b. Compartmentalization works whether students have fully developed abdominal areas or not. Conventional seat belts, which are lap restraints only, are not suitable for small children whose abdominal area and bone structure are not adequately developed to take the force of a lap belt alone. They need the help of chest harnesses also, which adds to the complexity of a proper seat belt solution.
c. Compartmentalization, once it has done its energy-absorbing job, leaves the student free to escape the bus. Seat belts could leave students strapped in, upside down, perhaps unconscious, in burning or flooding buses.

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/thread

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Under the compartmentalization concept

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I'll repeat my sarcasm: so a 4" piece of foam wins over being T-boned or a head-on collision. Sounds like a lobbyist came up with this crock of shite.

Pretty sure the "foam" in my truck seat is better than what's on a school bus.