National Coalition For School Bus Safety
National Coalition For School Bus Safety
 

NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2007

School Bus Safety: Do Belts Work?
EARNIE GRAFTON/ SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Seatmates buckle up in San Diego, where newer school buses are equipped with shoulder-harness belts at an additional cost of $12,000 (U.S.) per vehicle.

Seat belts on buses, pro and con
From the Canadian Association for Road Safety Professionals' website:

Benefits of seat belts

  • Perform well in high-speed crashes
  • Prevent children from being tossed around on buses (far-side impacts, rollovers, ejections)
  • Reduction in deaths and serious injuries to passengers.

Drawbacks

  • If used incorrectly, children can suffer seat belt-related injuries
  • Limited effectiveness in the event of a near-side impact collision
  • Not wearing a seat belt becomes more dangerous when bus is designed to accommodate restraints
  • High cost

Source: CARSP website/Alan German, retired chief of collision investigations at Transport Canada

More Secure in Some Scenarios, But Dangers Also Cited
Apr 13, 2007 04:30 AM

Kristin Rushowy
Education Reporter

Experts can't agree on whether putting seat belts in school buses makes children safer, as debate keeps growing a day after a Brampton boy was killed in a crash.

"Generally, school buses do very well in collisions," said Kevin McClafferty of the collision research team at the University of Western Ontario, after this week's crash on Highway 10 that took 10-year-old John Pham's life.

But McClafferty is not convinced seat belts make a difference except in rare cases.

"The problem with seat belts is how do you get kids to wear them?" he said. Bus interiors can be altered to put in belts but the problem is "you have to have somebody on the bus" to make sure they're used.

McClafferty noted that most school bus-related accidents and injuries occur outside the bus itself.

But Alan Ross, a Connecticut doctor who heads the non-profit National Coalition for School Bus Safety, called it "common sense" to use seat belts and blamed a powerful transportation lobby for keeping them out of buses to save money.

"Why do they require ... that you buckle up in a car but not a bus? The industry will say the (bus) seats are padded, but so is my dashboard," said Ross, adding his organization has many members from Canada in favour of mandatory three-point shoulder belts.

Pham was killed Wednesday when the bus he was travelling on with 26 classmates collided with a tractor-trailer and skidded onto the median of Highway 10. Students were tossed in the air when the vehicle bounced to a sudden stop.

Yesterday, Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield said she will convene a review "as soon as possible" of all the studies and evidence available to determine if more can be done to make school buses safe.

In Ontario alone, some 800,000 children are transported on school buses twice a day. From 1995 to 2004, five children across Canada have died in school bus accidents, and some 4,407 passengers were injured.

Transport Canada, meanwhile, said it is already looking at ways to improve the vehicles.

"As long as there are children being injured, we have work to do," said Suzanne Tylko, chief of crash-worthiness research, adding that school buses remain the safest method of student transportation.

Seats on school buses are packed tightly together and have padded backs so that passengers are "compartmentalized" in a crash, with the seat in front cushioning forward impact.

That has less effect in side-impact collisions or rollovers, although the small windows prevent passengers from being ejected.

Right now, Transport Canada is looking at the foam used in the seats "to see if that can be improved" as well as testing to see if the seat design itself can be modified "to hold a child better, especially in the case of a side-impact crash ..." In the 1980s, the old Toronto, Etobicoke and York boards had seat belts on buses. Today, a handful of U.S. jurisdictions mandate seat belts on buses, including New York and New Jersey.

California is the only U.S. state to mandate three-point shoulder belts, much like those in a car. Lap belts have been shown to worsen children's injuries in school bus accidents.

Safety organizations also warn that seat belts can hinder evacuation of a school bus in an emergency, such as a crash into a water-filled ditch or lake, as do the small windows designed to keep kids inside.

Ross, however, said he's seen studies that show kids are able to evacuate faster than adults, with or without seat belts.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as the American Medical Association and the injury prevention centre of the Winnipeg Children's Hospital and numerous other medical groups, support three-point belts.

As does Brampton school bus driver Sandy Alford.

"Many times I've had to come to an abrupt stop on highways or fast-flowing streets, because people don't respect school buses and try to get in front of them ... and if you've got a 72-passenger bus with three little kindergarten or preschool kids to a seat, someone is going to fall out," said Alford.

But in California, "the jury's still out" on the effectiveness of the three-point belts, said Alexandra Robinson, president of the California Association of School Transportation Officials.

"I don't want anyone to think school buses without seat belts are unsafe," she said. "But ... most parents say, and rightly they should, if seat belts save even one life" then they're worth the money.

Right now, with just 25 new buses in her San Diego home district having the seat belts, it's too early to gauge if they are providing any extra safety, she said. Expense is an issue, since the belts cost up to $12,000 (U.S.) extra per vehicle.

With files from Rob Ferguson and Tess Kalinowski

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