Whenever there’s a serious school bus accident — or, in the case of Tuesday’s crash, a horrific one — the lack of seat belts on school buses invariably comes up, and newspapers invariably write about it. (A short story I wrote last night is here, a longer 2005 story from the Washington Post is here, etc.)

Only a few states have moved to require seat belts on all buses, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration explains here why it doesn’t feel that belts are necessary. Reasons for not having them include the current low death rate aboard school buses, the cost, the fact that children might wear them improperly, the risk of abdominal injuries, the possibility that belts would lower the capacity of buses, and the difficulty of evacuating children who are belted in. On the other hand, time might tell whether some of yesterday’s deaths and injuries could have been prevented by a simple device found in most other moving vehicles; an organization that supports belts on buses is here (and alert reader Arthur’s entry in the comments below offers a counterpoint to the NHTSA position).

What’s your take? Would kids be safer belted in? Would they actually wear them? Could the belts be configured in a way that wouldn’t require booster seats? Who would pay the extra cost? Please share your thoughts and ideas below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 6:05 am and is filed under Links, Main, Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.