Why school buses don't have seat belts?

let's put a smileonthatface

its accyually safer

Kyle van der Meer

Children are not likely to fly out the front window on a school bus. Most buses do not travel at the same velocities achieved by smaller vehicles. There is a longer way to drop were the bus to flip and the child left hanging decides to unbuckle.

some girl

it would be safe to have seat belts. but what if there was a problem and kids needed out of the bus quickly and they were small children that couldn't undo seat belts.... that could be equally as disastrous.

Bliss71

The reason is that if there was an accident and the bus was on fire, or in water, for instance....it would take too long to release each child from their seat belts. There are other reasons, but to me this is the major one.

Professional Worker

all the school know that they cant get 50 children to put on their seat belts anyways so Yeah they assume that the buss driver will drive safe and nothing will happen.

ben_of_marlow

Bus manufacturers don't want to spend the money, but lobbyists are fighting to get that changed. It won't be long before buses are required to have seat belts too.

Shelly

http://www.safety-council.org/info/traffic/schbusbelt.htm

http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=167&o=0&l=dir&q=do+don%27t+school+buses+have+seat+belts

Zach

This has come up a few times, and there are a few reasons why they don't.

Bus seats are padded, set close together and have high backs. This is so if the bus is hit from the front or the back, the rider will hit the seat without travelling far and without putting their body in a potentially dangerous situation.

If there is an emergency where the students have to leave the bus quickly, the seatbelt is a short delay. But the hazard comes to the responsibility of the bus driver to make sure that all of the students are unbuckled and out. There is also the problem of jammed buckles in this situation.

Cost has a small addition. Not only for the seatbelts, but also for inspecting the belt material every year.

Seat belts can also be used as weapons by swinging the buckle at another rider. They can also be used to break the glass of the window next to the seat.

As for the news report, it is actually very uncommon for busses to flip over. But again, in that case, the students would be stuck upside down in their seats, and the bus driver again, would still have to ensure their safety.

Mama Mia

I agree, but I notice the higher the IQ of the educational school facility, the less common sense they exercise with the safety of other peoples children. Their excuse is always "lack of funds".
)-(

bob geldof

our school doesnt

Joe

More money for the teachers? Teachers are paid very little for what they do. The reason school buses don't have safety belts is due to immaturity. How many kids do you know that wear seatbelts because they should, without being told? They had them on the bus when I was a kid and they were used as toys and in some cases, as weapons. You'd be prone to many more accidents from this type of behavior than the number of kids injured yearly in school bus accidents.

BIG TIM

i agree with you completely. If Children NEVER use them in their everyday life as a passenger on a school bus, whats going to make them all of a sudden use them when they have a car of their own?

That is a horrible example that is being set by the people in authority

Patricia S

Many of the newer buses in my area do. They are gradually being phased in and eventually all of them will have seat belts.

Kiwi.

That's such a clever question. In the UK any coach kids go on tend to have seatbelts.

Harry

This question has been brought up many times on Y!A, do a search to see some of the previous iterations.

The answer is twofold. First, the mass and height of the bus provides a very high level of protection for the occupants inside in the event of a collision. Since 1990, only nine percent of people killed in accidents involving school buses were occupants of the bus. The others were either pedestrians or occupants of other vehicles. The high seatbacks on buses also provide a level of restraint. Second, a more frequent problem on buses is an event which requires rapid evacuation of the bus (such as a fire). In this instance, the first order of business is to get the kids off of the bus as quickly as possible. This is why bus evac drills are done fairly frequently, and is also why buses for public transportation have breakaway windows and roof-mounted escape hatches. A quick evacuation would be greatly hampered by having the kids belted in, as young children would be likely to panic and require help from the driver to be unbelted. Having to unbelt even a few children on the bus would take valuable time which could not be spared if there were a fire on the bus.

So, to summarize, it is likely more kids would be injured or killed if they were required to wear seatbelts than not.

Marylou F

I was a school bus driver for 17 years and the story they tried to tell us was that the seats were designed so that in an accident the seat in front would cushion the child on impact and they would slip between the seats.??? I don't know if that is a true story but I think it would have been very hard for the drivers to get all the 66/72 students to buckle up, when I was a driver, 10 years ago. today they are so accustomed to it that it might not be so hard. There are alot of sweet little beings out there that REALLY like to push the rules.

bungee

buses are rather large with specially trained drivers and lots of flashing lights and laws to protect them. The one you talk about was caused by driver negligance. How do you enforce a 50 person seat belt use, do we need to hire seat belt cops for every bus. are you willing to pay extra for all this. how many buses have you ever seen in an accident. do children get hurt at times sure and that is sad but you can't protect against every possible thing that can or could happen. we have many things that happen thousands of times a day lets devote energy to them rather than something that happens a couple times a year

LilyRosemary

Well, if you think about it, there are usually about 40 kids to one adult on a school bus. Smaller kids may be unable to get their seatbelt unhooked if anything happened and may become trapped and one adult couldn't possibly unhook 40 seatbelts in any kind of hurry. Also, I think the seats are designed so that seatbelts aren't needed.

If a bus full of seatbelted kids flipped over, there would still be many injuries.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this....

UCANTCME

Compartmentalization, a concept seen frequently on commercial airplanes, involves seating passengers in rows of padded seats with cushioned backs. The belief is that during frontal or rear impact, the most common types of wrecks involving school buses, passengers would either be pushed back into their seats or thrown forward into the padded backs of the row ahead. The use of seat belts might require stiffer seats, which would negate the theory of compartmentalization. It is also feared that some students would receive internal injuries from seat belts through a process called submarining, the tendency for a body to slide downwards during impact.

Seat belts on school buses may also hamper rescue or evacuation efforts, as adults or older students may have to spend precious minutes unbuckling young or disoriented passengers. Unruly students could also use the heavy buckles as makeshift weapons, creating even more of a safety hazard. There is also the argument that seat belts would only protect passengers of school buses during unusual events such as roll-overs or flips, not other possible accidents such as fires or submersion. Considering the expense of retrofitting current school buses or replacing entire fleets with approved seat belt systems, the benefits of seat belt use do not currently outweigh the liabilities.

newdad

How would the school bus driver regulate all those children? It should be mandatory, but ...

Alex A

its a stupid law that the insurance companies created and strongly lobbied for. i dont think the law extends to buses

Jane L

since when you see buses having seat belts?
public buses dont even own seat belts!
it's just like that.

pmo1708

very good question. doesnt make any sense at all to me. only thing i could come up with is maybe bcuz they know that 1 bus driver couldn't force all the kids on the bus listen to them

Jeebs

All school buses are required to have all saftey equiptment like that red stopsign on the side of the bus that flashes including seatbelts. They are most likely tucked under the cushion hanging out behind the seat. ITs because no one wears them and there is absolutely no way to enforce 30 screaming kids twice everyday to wear their seat belts. Its gonna have to take a big mishap may headlines "Bus Rams a elephant" to get people aware that seatbelts save lives. Expecially on a bus

THE SEEKER II

i tottaly agree with u.... its soo unsafe for kids 2 be without seatbelts... the police make such a fuss on adults why not on children ?????

Mrs Robinson 2 B

they should have belts

good point

elz thats not true

Foxy Roxyy

i noticed the newer ones now do, but you are right. i really dont know, maybe because you dont know how many people are going to be sitting in one seat (ie: sometimes there are like 3-4 kids on one seat, which isnt safe anyway)

they should definitely do something about it. pretty stupid if you ask me

Steven

That's actually one of the better questions I've seen here.
You know it's a good question when no one can answer it.

michellejt14

Most school busses only have seat belts in the two front seats. The little busses all seats have seat belts usually.

Mamilinda :)

Because the impact is not as strong for a bus in case it gets in an accident. Cuz the bus is big

ken p

cuz is a bus not a car so it wont have seat belt for ya . and also you know how many seat belt do we need to put on all the skew bus it like alot if every bus have it that be super cool but it also cost alot for goverment . haha the goverment doesnt care about us so they just dotn want to let u have seat belt on the bus that all i mean school bus lol

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