New Look at School Bus Seat Belts After Crash

(CBS/AP)  Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were in Missouri Friday to look at the horrific interstate crash that killed a 15-year-old girl on a school bus and the driver of another vehicle.

Officials will look into what factors may have caused the wreck and how to prevent similar accidents, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart said Friday.

"We've been interested for some time in school bus safety," Hart said. "We're also interested in construction zone safety."

Grief for 2 Teens Dead in Mo. School Bus Crash
2 Killed, Dozens Hurt in Mo. School Bus Crash

The accident happened Thursday on Interstate 44, about 40 miles from St. Louis. A semi cab slowed for road construction and was struck by a GMC pickup. Two buses carrying high school band students then slammed into that wreck, killing a 15-year-old student and the driver of another vehicle.

No charges have been filed in the wreck. Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. Jeff Wilson said it will be up to Franklin County prosecutors to decide that.

Hart said the NTSB isn't interested in pointing fingers.

"We are here to determine the cause of the accident, not looking at blame," he said.

Among other issues, the NTSB will examine whether seat belts on the bus could have helped.

He said investigators will also consider the possible benefits of accident-avoidance technology for vehicles such as school buses that would provide some warning to drivers about impending slowdowns and automatically apply brakes.

Although every state has laws requiring seat belts or restraints for children in passenger cars, only six states (New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas) have laws requiring lap or three-point seat belts on large school buses.

In some cases only newly-purchased or recently manufactured buses fall within the requirement.

In Louisiana and Texas, they are only required if school districts can get funding for them.

Federal standards on school bus safety from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) only require three-point belts on smaller school buses (those weighing less than 10,000 pounds).

In Missouri, where yesterday's deadly crash occurred, seat belts are not required in large school buses, but are recommended if school districts can obtain funding.

It was not clear if the buses in yesterday's crash had seat belts.

According to a 2006 study in the journal Pediatrics, there were on average 17,000 school bus-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms annually from 2001 to 2003, with motor vehicle crashes accounting for 42.3% of them.

A 2009 report by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies states that data from 1991-1999 indicates on average 5 children are killed each year while rising in a school bus; 15 more pedestrian children are killed annually in school bus-related accidents.

[MrOpinionated]

The seats in a bus are specially designed safety cushions. If you are sitting properly in the seat a student will not be hurt hitting the seat in front on a typical impact. Get the facts before you blow a gasket.

[ludvig1-2009]

How would the school bus driver know that everyone is buckled? Would the school bus driver be legally responsible for making sure that they were like in autos in California? If the belts are installed and not used in an accident who will the parents try to sue, the driver, the school district?

[Fatesrider]

Here's how this will work:

The NTSB will come up with a way of putting seat belts into buses. Then someone (probably the GAO) will look at how much it will cost (On the order of a billion or two dollars for all the buses in the country).

Then some bright boys will try to figure out where that money will come from and realize that cash strapped businesses and school districts can't afford it.

Finally, someone will do some cost analysis based on the number of people on buses without seat belts killed and injured and come to the conclusion that it's cheaper to kill a few people than it is to fix the problem.

This is the way of the real world and if it goes down any other way, I'd be very surprised.

[smitvict]

"it's cheaper to kill a few people than it is to fix the problem"
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When you could spend the money required to put seat belts in buses somewhere else (example pedestrian crosswalks) and save many more lives, why would you put seat belts in buses and put do death children? A cost analysis saves lives by optimizing children saved per dollar spent.

[PCNelson]

I was school bus driver for 20 years. I drove in Florida for 5 years, there is not a law for the seat belts there but some of the new buses were coming from factory with seat belts installed. So with this experience let me comment on seat belts in School buses.

How do I as a drive inforce that each child puts on the seat belt. I can walk the aisles and check each child before leaving the school, but what happens when I am in my seat driving with 50 students behind me. They will take them off. Or what happens when, God forbid, there is an accident, what if I am injured, who undoes all the seat belts for a quick and safe evacuation.

In my experience the buses with seat belts installed were used as weapons against each other. There were eye injuries, knots on heads, teeth chipped and in a few cases stitches had to be taken. The casualties are small compared to the miles driven, don't complicate a drivers job any more than it already is.

[jasperlily]

You do make an excellent point! The behavior of kids on buses is indescribable. Of course, the parents hold the drivers accountable if something happens to their precious little horrors. Seat belts should be mandatory equipment. Mis-use or non-use of them should be legally on the kids' heads - as minors, that means the sole responsibility of their parents.

[jasperlily]

I've never understood why seat belts aren't mandatory on school buses. Are they above the law or something, and the safety of the kids meaningless? However, a seat belt sure didn't do a thing for the poor pickup truck driver in this horrific accident, did it? How about something automatic in school buses that prevents the bus from being driven too close to an object in front, whether that object is stopped or just going too slow?

[smitvict]

"data from 1991-1999 indicates on average 5 children are killed each year while rising in a school bus"
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So, on the low side $7,000 per bus for 3 point lap belts, 25,000 buses annually, cost is $175,000,000. Using the death rate of 5 students per year from the article, that is $35,000,000 per student life saved, assuming 100% seat belt effectiveness (which is not going to be the case).

The question is, are there other death mitigation items the government could spend money on (say, crossing guards, traffic lights, a pedestrian overpass) that cost less than $15M per life saved. Children die needlessly if we spend money on solutions that are expensive relative to the benefit. That's why the seat belt argument is not a slam dunk.

(source: http://stnonline.com/resources/seat-belts/seat-belt-faqs)

[Green8019]

The NTSB says "We've been interested for some time in school bus safety," Hart said. "We're also interested in construction zone safety."

I was involved in (2) school bus accidents as a kid in back in '71 & '72 and one was a fatality with over 20 of us going to the hospital. How long does it take the NTSB to look at this? This is insane!!

[GunsInTheSky]

by Ms_enza August 6, 2010 3:03 PM EDT
Do you work for the NTSB? Because their talking-point used to be "Buses are SOOOO big".

Neither is an intelligent argument.

You put the seatbelt in the bus. Its use should be mandated, but unfunded. If your kid is smart, they wear it. If not, then they die.

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Feel better since you can associate me with an unknown organization in your mind?

Anyway, kids aren't smart (thus the term minor) nor do they think they are going to die.

Obviously your goal isn't about the kids since you really don't care if they live or die. You just care if you can pass some feel good "mandatory" law. Pointless, imo.

If they can figure out a way to put in three point seatbelts on a school bus that would be the only reasonable solution. Otherwise you are trading a handful of death with hundreds of head injuries?assuming they are even used.

[Cyber998]

They shouldn't have seat belts because they aren't needed.

Every single day dozens of kids die in car accidents. If we stopped kids being in cars it would stop far, far, far more than the very rare bus death.

This is what's going wrong in this country. The media get people worked up over stupid things (e.g. this, terrorists, pedo's) and ignore the real dangers out there which is why half the economy recently crashed.

Like planes, buses are far safer forms of transport than cars or even walking. Why concentrate on making something already very safe a tiny bit safer when there are far more dangerous things being ignored?

[GunsInTheSky]

In theory all school buses should have seat belts, but i think it is a bit idealist to suggest they would save lives. From the lack of use (getting unsupervised kids to comply is not realistic) to head injuries resulting from lap belts, it is unlikely to be meaningful.