I’ve wondered for years why school and other buses don’t have seat belts. They have them on planes, and school/passenger buses I rode in travel at 100km/h, so why no restraints to protect kids from a rollover or head-on collision?
Why no seat belts?
Very few injuries happen in school buses. Instead of requiring seat belts, school buses are designed and constructed differently from passenger cars. School buses protect passengers through “compartmentalization”, a design that includes:
- Seats with high backs;
- Seats filled with energy-absorbing material;
- Seats placed close together to form compartments;
- Strong seat anchorages.
Studies have shown that adding seat belts to the current seating configuration of a school bus can increase the chance of head and neck injuries. For a seat belt to be effective, it must be worn correctly, snug and on the upper thighs. Because school vehicles carry passengers from the very young to high school students, if seat belts were used, they would need to be readjusted and their use monitored. A seat belt not worn correctly may cause serious injuries.
So in Ontario at least they seem to have reasons for not requiring belts, despite the different kinds of collisions possible in a vast province where busses operate in both 50km/h zones and 100km/h zones.
There have been several previous studies in Australia that have considered bus safety, including the fitting of seat belts. The consensus of expert opinion has always been that the accident rate among bus passengers is so low, and the benefits of seat belts so doubtful, that the expense of fitting belts cannot be justified. However, it has been concluded that seat belts should be fitted in newly built inter-urban coaches, in conjunction with well-padded and high-backed seats. This has resulted in the implementation of appropriate Australian Design Rules (ADRs).
Recommendation 1: the mandatory fitting of lap-only or lap/sash seat belts in large route service buses used for the transport of children in the School Student Transport Scheme is not recommended;
But the same study says that buses with under 17 seats should not be exempt from requirements that they have seat belts. What’s the difference between a bus with 15 seats and 18 seats, besides 3 seats? Well apparently the seat types are different enough to forgo the benefits of a seat belt. The back is padded more in school buses [at least since 1977], and adding a seat belt could introduce more head and neck injuries when only that part of the body hits the seat in front of the passenger. Also, every kid on a bus would have to wear their belt to keep things safe since the ones who are not buckled in would hit buckled students as a projectile.
Seat belts are largely intended to prevent ejection from a vehicle. Typically, only children standing in the aisle or the bus driver are at high risk of being ejected from a school bus. - Source: Wisconsin
It seems to me that proper belts that are uniformly used would increase safety on passenger buses traveling especially at highway speeds, but there are valid reasons for not having school buses install belts as long as highbacked seats with padding are installed closely together.
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Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy » Blog Archive » NewsTalk980.com talks about school bus seatbelts | 17-Oct-06 at 12:57 pm | Permalink
[...] I investigated the reasoning behind not putting seatbelts for kids onto busses. Ideally there would be belts in use, however realistically there are valid reasons for not requiring them. One includes the necessity of showing a small child how to undo their belt in a hurry, in a situation where the driver is incapacitated, and there’s a fire on the bus. [...]
Harriot | 01-Nov-06 at 4:40 pm | Permalink
I think there should be seat belts on busses. THere have been bus crashes. The question is; will seat belts help?
Saskboy | 01-Nov-06 at 6:01 pm | Permalink
If they have seat belts, the seats have to change to be higher, because tall kids will get more head injuries if their pelvis is held in place as a pivot point in a head-on crash. Kids also vandalize the belts. Implemented properly, they are a good idea, but for some busses they aren’t a good option, because the seats are designed for kids without belts now.
nikki | 14-Mar-07 at 7:13 am | Permalink
NO
it wont help school busses are built up higher aso the impact occures under the children
Saskboy | 14-Mar-07 at 8:48 am | Permalink
Nikki, so long as the seats are designed as they are, it’s risky to have belts if the kids are too tall in the short backed seats. If they start designing the bus seats differently, I’d be for putting belts on the bus. I think they should be on commercial buses already.
Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy » Blog Archive » Sad but true about belts | 07-Oct-07 at 2:38 am | Permalink
[...] car driver hitting a school bus with no belts, becomes a lesson in seat belt use. However, there are reasons there aren’t belts on buses, but no good reason for a driver not to have one on. Sphere: [...]
Frank | 05-Jun-08 at 3:52 pm | Permalink
The reasons for not having restraints do not outweigh the advantages. Improper wearing of devices happens in all vehicles. This point is not valid. The egg crate theory is also invalid. There are broken eggs in an egg crate. Cost effective…. not a good argument, since our school buses carry the most valuable cargo in the world, our children…. If one child can be saved, maybe yours, would not the cost be worth it?
Frank
Saskboy | 05-Jun-08 at 11:36 pm | Permalink
Except Frank, we’d have to know the probability of misuse of restraints, and then weigh the probability of injury from misuse, against the probability of injury of no use, and see what is more hazardous.
Bus policies are changing. In Canada there have been several places that have stopped using 15 [?] person vans after the New Brunswick accident a few months ago that killed most of a sports team.
To me cost is not the factor to decide on. It’s whatever is safer in the real world.
Frank | 06-Jun-08 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
My question would be, how can you know the probability of misuse, since all we have is no use?
As in passenger vehicles in California, no matter how safe the vehicle, click it or ticket is the policy. Should that not be the law across the board? It sounds like a money issue to me. I agree with you that the cost factor should not be the deciding factor, but I think in our cash strapped school districts, I think that it may be. If it is safer, then so be it, design the buses with that in mind. That would make it safer in the real world.
Since there are not as many school buses on the road as passenger vehicles, I can see how the statistics are in favor of less injuries in school buses.
In a roll-over accident, the only projectiles would be the non secured occupants.