School bus seat belts issue heating up
Seat Belts on
School Buses
Should seat belts or other effective restraint system be required on America's big school buses?
Your Thought
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After months of studying the school bus seat belts issue, my research indicated there's
as much or more emotion than fact involved in this issue. This well written and balanced story from SHNS
helps demonstrate what can happen when the bureaucracy becomes involved in what should
be a relatively simple issue. -JK
By Joan Lowy
Reporter with Scripps Howard News Service. First published by
Scripps Howard News Service, original story title, "SCHOOL BUS ACCIDENTS
FOCUS ATTENTION ON LACK OF SEAT BELTS," 04/07/1999, Copyright ©1999, All
Rights Reserved. Posted by permission from Scripps Howard News Service.
Scripps Howard News Service
The last time David Burzinski saw his 9-year-old daughter Kristine
alive, he kissed her goodbye as she set off to catch a bus to school.
Four hours later, he identified her body at a morgue from the clothes
she was wearing, her face battered beyond recognition.
On the way to her school in Monticello, Minn., Kristine's school bus
collided head-on with a gravel truck. Both vehicles spun around from the
force of the impact, colliding again along the bus' left side. The bus
went through a ditch and came to rest in an open field.
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Of the 13 children on board, three -- including Kristine -- were killed.
Four others were critically injured. Like most school buses, Kristine's
bus wasn't equipped with seat belts. "As far as I'm concerned, my daughter died for the corporate bottom
line," David Burzinski said. "I firmly believe that had there been
seat belts my daughter would be here with us today."
Private contractors, who operate a third of the nation's 440,000 yellow
school buses, and many school officials have fought the installation of
lap belts on school buses for nearly 30 years. For the most part,
federal and state governments have gone along with them.
That may be changing. Greater public acceptance of seat belts and
indications that serious injuries to students on buses are on the rise
have reinvigorated the controversy.
Two federal safety agencies, the National Transportation Safety Board
and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are taking a new
look at the issue following a series of tragic school bus accidents,
including the one that killed Kristine Burzinski.
The safety board is expected to issue a recommendation by late spring or
early summer on whether seat belts and other safety improvements should
be required on school buses. The board, which investigates bus crashes,
cannot mandate the installation of seat belts. But its recommendations
carry significant weight and could influence a two-year study being
conducted by the highway administration, the regulatory agency, on how
to make school buses safer. That study is expected to be completed in
June 2000.
Last year, the National Parent-Teacher Association for the first time
adopted a resolution calling for all new school buses to be equipped
with lap belts. The American Medical Association, Physicians for
Automotive Safety, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American
College of Emergency Physicians and other medical groups also endorse
belts.
The number of school districts or communities requiring lap belts in
school buses also has risen in recent years to nearly 300. Only two
states, New York and New Jersey, require that school buses be equipped
with lap belts and only New Jersey mandates their use. But there has
been an increase in bills proposed in state legislatures that would
require school districts to phase-in lap belts as they purchase new
buses. This year, bills were introduced in 31 states.
Most of those measures will die because of opposition by commercial
school bus operators and school transportation officials. However, seat
belt proponents say they believe they have a chance to enact laws
requiring belts on new buses in North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota and
New Hampshire.
Lap belts add about $1,100 to $1,600 to the price of a school bus, which
typically costs between $40,000 and $70,000. School buses generally last
12 to 15 years.
Opponents of requiring belts contend that school buses are already the
safest form of road transportation. Seat belts, they say, may do more
harm than good. Kids may use them as weapons. They may slow students
exiting a bus in an emergency. They may cause abdominal injuries in
certain crashes.
Supporters can counter each argument. Students who are belted in are
less likely to be discipline problems. Students dazed or knocked
unconscious in a crash or rollover would have even more trouble exiting
than students held in place by belts. The risk of abdominal injuries is
negligible and those injuries are preferable to worse injuries without
belts.
School bus safety has been exaggerated, seat belt supporters say. While
deaths to students aboard buses are rare, they note that there are a
significant number of serious injuries and they are on the rise.
Indeed, the ubiquitous yellow school bus is a vehicular dinosaur, slow
to adopt modern safety features, critics charge. Only the United States
and Canada use the yellow school bus. In Europe, children are
transported on heavier motorcoaches with seat belts.
"It's become a joke on the international scene. When the German
engineers see our yellow school bus, they laugh at us," said Dr. Alan
Ross, president of the National Coalition for School Bus Safety.
Continued
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