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SEAT BELTS ON SCHOOL BUSES - NTSB REPORT 09-21-1999 GUEST EDITORIALSeat Belts on School Buses NTSB Report Guest Editorial David Cullen attended the NTSB bus crashworthiness hearing held in Las Vegas on August 12, 1998 as a representative of National and Florida PTA. He is the co-author of resolutions adopted by those organizations in favor of seat belts on school buses, and is the co-chair with his wife, Mary-Lynn, of the Florida Chapter of the National Coalition for School Bus Safety There were at least 62,000 school bus passenger injuries and 51 fatalities between 1991-96. September 21 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report on school bus safety. They concluded that compartmentalization, the current occupant protection system that relies on closely spaced padded seats, is incomplete because it does not protect children in side impacts or rollover accidents. The NTSB also recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) develop performance standards to protect passengers in all accident scenarios within two years and require new buses to meet them. Unfortunately, NTSB staff did not use the meeting to support their 19 conclusions and 14 recommendations with an analysis of empirical evidence. Instead, they ensured negative coverage for belts on buses by devoting most of their presentation to an animated video showing hypothetical dangers in a simulation. The technical draft of this report was riddled with errors. For example the driver of the school bus in the Buffalo MT accident was shown on the diagram to be a 7 year old boy. (The driver was a 36 year old lap/shoulder belted male.) There were at least 30 errors and discrepancies relating to narratives, diagrams, and injury levels. When the simulation predicted injuries are compared with the actual injuries suffered by passengers in the April 10, 1997 Monticello, MN accident, the accuracy rate is 58%, little better than a coin toss. The NTSB’s recommendations and conclusions don’t say anything about the "hazards" of belts. The only mention of the simulation points out its shortcoming in conclusion #5, "It cannot be determined whether the current design of available restraint systems for large school buses would have reduced the risk of injury to the school bus passengers in the accidents simulated for this special investigation." This says nothing about increasing the risk of injury. Neither does it say what conclusions might be drawn from physical evidence, medical records, police reports, and on-site investigations. The event was orchestrated to show belts in a bad light so let’s examine the "hazards" ostensibly exposed by the computer simulations. The primary hazard is supposed to be increased head injury caused by the upper body flailing about while the pelvis is held in place by a lap belt. Yet staffer Joe Osterman acknowledged that even though the Board "looked aggressively" they were unable to find any significant cases of belt induced injury in school bus accidents. Belts have been in every small school bus manufactured after 1977 and in large buses in New York, New Jersey, and many districts around the country. If lap belts posed a danger to children we would have seen examples by now. Simulated lap/shoulder belted passengers supposedly fared no better because school bus seats are too "flat and slippery." This is why restraints are necessary. The virtual passengers slipped out of their shoulder belts when subjected to strong rotational forces. Students at either end of a large spinning bus will experience centripetal force, but since a large bus will spin more slowly than a small one because of its greater mass, passengers will experience similar forces in either bus. Osterman also said that school bus seats were not designed for lap belts. Small school buses have been required to have seat belts since 1977 and they have the same Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 222 seats as large buses. NHTSA stated in the Federal Register on January 28, 1976, (Vol 41, No. 19) in establishing school bus seating standards, "…an operator or school district may safely attach seat belts to the seat frame, even where anchorages are not installed as original equipment. The seat is strong enough to take the force of occupants against the seat back if no belts are utilized, or the force of occupants against seat belts if occupants are restrained by belts attached to the seat frame through the anchorages provided." And independent forensic consultant Dr. Arnold W. Siegel writes, "For school buses, the seat belt angles related to the pelvic area of a child are close to ideal due to the seat design, the seat height from the floor, and the location of the belts to the seat horizontal frame bar." This does not sound like a seat that is not designed for a seat belt. NTSB has finally recognized that compartmentalization does not work in side impacts or rollovers. What does the NTSB propose? Chairman Jim Hall says states should wait for NHTSA to complete its study. NHTSA has steadfastly maintained that compartmentalization provides all the protection students need. It bowed to industry pressure to omit belts, belt anchorages, 28 inch high back seats, and roof hatches from its requirements in 1977. And it has ignored numerous NTSB recommendations in the past. The interests of children will not be served by waiting on NHTSA’s pleasure. It is a shame that the NTSB is too timid to control its staff and break free of the influences of NHTSA and the anti-belt voices of the industry. The direction the NTSB seems to be heading is to require high backed padded seats with padded side arms and some sort of restraint to keep the passenger in the seat in a rollover. This is what was in the 1968 UCLA study, "School Bus Passenger Protection". NHTSA and the industry have known about those recommendations for 31 years but have insisted that compartmentalization is adequate. It is absurd to ask the American public to wait for another 31 years to protect our students. Computer simulations make for flashy videos but are not yet up to modeling complex collision events that may take seconds to complete. The NTSB simulations left out the Flagstaff, AZ crash because it was too complicated. This 450 degree rollover resulted in severe injuries for the driver, two critical injuries (one passenger brain damaged and one paralyzed), two serious, eleven moderate, and sixteen minor injuries. There were five ejections. The NTSB was unable to get its simulators to model airplane crashes caused by a rudder malfunction. Empirical evidence in the real world shows the seat belt record is positive. NHTSA and the industry may come up with a better design in time. Until then, we should continue to provide the advantages of seat belts to all children: protection in side impacts and rollovers; improved behavior on the bus; keeping passengers’ heads and arms safely inside; keeping small children securely seated during swerves or short stops; and reinforcing the "Buckle Up!" message every time a child gets on a bus.
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