SEATBELTS will be mandatory on
all West Australian school buses after the state government
today bowed to public pressure following a serious crash.
Debate on the issue has been
raging since a private school bus and a truck collided at
Baldivis, 60km south of Perth, on October 21.
All but three of the children
on the bus were injured when the privately owned vehicle
clipped a truck and rolled onto its side, crashing into a
stationary vehicle.
The seatbelts the Mandurah
Baptist College students were wearing have been credited
with saving their lives and protecting them from more
serious injury.
Despite community and police
support for bus seatbelts, Premier Geoff Gallop initially
said he saw no "case for compulsion".
But after first announcing
that seatbelts would be fitted on some school buses from
next year, Dr Gallop today went a step further, saying all
new school buses would have seatbelts from next year, and
the existing fleet would be retrofitted with restraints.
The move will make WA the
first Australian state with compulsory school bus seatbelts.
Dr Gallop denied the
government had backflipped on the issue.
"We've taken on board the
advice of the public debate, we have taken note of what the
police service have said to us, and we have decided to go
that one step further," he told reporters.
"You can take the overall
cost-benefit type analysis, or you can focus on the
consequences of a specific incident, and we have decided to
go for the second course (of action) and we believe it is
the right way forward."
The government will spend
about $18 million retrofitting nearly 800 state school buses
with belts on a priority basis, with buses travelling on
country roads, for example, likely to be addressed first.
Dr Gallop said he expected
all non-government schools to follow suit, and if they did
not, he was prepared to consider legislation to ensure
compliance.
"It will be a massive task,
but we are up to the challenge of providing the safest
school buses in the nation," the premier said.
The full cost of the new
policy and a timetable for its implementation will be
determined by the end of the year.
Seatbelts will not be fitted
on TransPerth public transport buses and trains.
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