  |
|
NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2004The Great Seat Belt
Debate (continued) Laws and Regulatory Developments School transportation is a massive enterprise. Nationwide more than 435,000 yellow school buses are on U.S. roads carrying 22,500,000 school children daily to and from school an average of 180 school days per year. Nationally that computes to more than 10 billion student rides annually, according to a recent Highway Accident Report by the National Transportation Safety Board. There is no federal law requiring any form of active occupant restraint system on large school buses! To date only a handful of states have enacted legislation requiring lap belts on large school buses (i.e. over 10,000 lbs. Gross Vehicle Weight Rating). Of these -- New York, New Jersey and Florida -- only New Jersey mandates their use. Meanwhile, California and Louisiana require 3-point systems on large buses purchased after July 31, 2004. In its current 2004 legislative session, Florida legislators are considering adopting 3-point systems. Federal regulation does require bus manufacturers to install lapbelts in small school buses weighing under 10,000 lbs. GVWR. However, only six states -- Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia -- have laws or regulations mandating their use on small school buses, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Never-the-less, there have been scores of efforts to require seat belts in school buses in state legislatures for decades. With the exceptions noted above, most failed. In New Jersey proponents labored for 20 years before tasting success. Efforts in the U.S. Congress to require seat belts have floundered too. This is not to suggest the federal government has ignored the matter. Starting in the early-1970s, the U.S. Congress and federal regulatory agencies embarked on a decades-long effort to address various aspects of school transportation. The thrust of federal polices governing school bus safety has focused on regulations that embody strategies of crash avoidance and vehicle conspicuity, and on various safety countermeasures designed to enhance safe operations. Chief among these developments was a series of federal motor vehicle safety standards issued in 1977 to improve the crashworthiness of school buses. Included among these was "Federal Motor Vehicles Safety Standard 222: School Bus Passenger Seating and Crash Protection." This regulation introduced a passive occupant restraint system known as compartmentalization. It is unique to traditional U.S.-style school buses. Other examples: school buses are painted National School Bus Yellow so motorists nationwide recognize the same vehicles as a school bus; school buses are often outlined with bright reflective tape so they are easier seen during dusk and nighttime hours; school buses, along with fire trucks, ambulances and police cars, are able to stop traffic; and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 131 requires all school buses to come equipped with driver-activated stop arms for that specific purpose, and so on. The work is not done and continues to this day. School Bus Fatality and Injury Experience While it is undisputable that the use of active restraint systems helps save lives in passenger vehicles, a sobering fact is that they offer no guarantees that fatalities won't occur. Hear what the National Transportation Safety Board, based on its extensive research of crash dynamics, said at the 1995 Child Passenger Safety Conference: "In 1992, 5,669 children under the age of 11 were occupants in passenger car crashes involving at least one fatality. About 19 percent of the children were killed. Restraint usage was known for 1,022 of the 1,083 fatally injured children; about 65 percent of them were unrestrained. The percentage of unrestrained children who were killed (25.6) was almost double that of the percentage of restrained children who were not killed (13.6). The data suggest that if all of the children had been restrained, about 350 children who died might have survived." In the key measurement of fatalities, student fatalities attributed to school buses fell by three-fourths -- to 23 fatalities in 2001-2002 school from 75 in 1970, according to the annual Kansas Dept. of Education Loading and Unloading Zone Survey. Most occur to children in the loading and unloading zone, and about one third are caused by motorists who fail to stop for a stopped school bus. What about injuries? Reliable crash injury data is harder to come by in large part because there is no standardized method to collect the data. Since states do not use standardized definitions or injury reporting criteria it is difficult to compare data from state to state, or from year to year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's General Estimates System (GES) is designed to estimate accident injury phenomenon. The GES is a companion database to the National Accident Sampling System (NASS) which, like NHTSA's Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS), is based on police accident reports, death certificates, coroner/medical examiner reports, hospital medical records, etc. The information is coded utilizing standardized reporting definitions and criteria, and interpreted utilizing statistically valid methodologies. The data are submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation by agencies nationwide. All three databases are maintained by NHTSA's National Center for Statistics and Analysis. In late 1997, based on accident reports of nearly 1,900 school bus crashes drawn from the GES database covering 1988 to 1996, NHTSA statisticians found an average of 8,511 school bus injuries annually. Of these 96 percent were minor to moderate (bumps, bruises and scratches) on the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) while the remaining 4 percent were serious, severe, or critical. That computes to over 350 serious injuries annually. In a separate study, the National Transportation Safety Board analyzed types of injuries sustained by unrestrained school bus passengers in 43 serious school bus crashes. Noting that "ejection was extremely rare among the unrestrained school bus passengers in the study," the NTSB concluded: "... nearly 86 percent of all the school bus passengers involved in rollover crashes were either uninjured or received only minor injuries." In addition it found that most school bus occupant fatalities and serious injuries were "attributable to the occupants' seating position being in direct line with the crash forces. It is unlikely that the availability of any type of restraint would have improved their injury outcome." In a 1989 report examining the NTSB study, the New Jersey Institute of Technology made an analysis of these accident scenarios, including the number of side impact and rollover collisions, and number of fatalities and injuries. The Institute found less than one percent of the 1,106 surviving student passengers received serious, or severe to maximum injuries. Only 40 of 1,166 passengers in the 43 accidents were restrained by lap belts. These findings are consistent with those reported in the National Academy of Sciences' Special Report 222: "Of the estimated 9,500 injured school bus passengers, 5 percent (475) sustained incapacitating (A-level) injuries, 25 percent (2,375) sustained nonincapacitating (B-level) injuries, and 70 percent (6,650) sustained possible (C-level) injuries." Incapacitating injuries include "severe lacerations, broken or distorted limbs, skull or chest injuries, abdominal injuries," etc. Nonincapacitating injuries include "abrasions, bruises, minor and lacerations." And possible injuries include "injuries not evident, limping, complaint of pain, nausea, hysteria and others," according to Special Report 222. Based on these data there are 350 to 475 serious school bus injuries annually.
|
|