Bus Crash in Huntsville
All of the metro Huntsville area has a heavy heart tonight as our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of a school bus crash here in town. There are just no words for this tragedy, really. My heart grieves for the students involved, their families, and for Lee High as a whole. This will undoubtedly take some time for healing.
I hope that the good that comes of this tragedy is another opportunity to re-visit passenger restraints in school buses. I’m aware of the liability concerns that school districts and school bus manufacturers alike have for them, but I’m quite certain that a reasonable set of laws requiring their use and oversight can be made. Liability concerns pale in the face of the lost lives we’ve seen today.
May God grant peace upon all involved.
Yes my thoughts & prayers go out to each and every family member of these students. Out school buses are the safest way to transport children to and from school each day. Please read the following about seat belts on school buses. Thank you for your time.
Each day, about 440,000 public school buses transport 23.5 million children to and from school and school-related activities. These buses travel 4.3 billion miles each year. (Yes that’s billion)
The debate over whether school buses should be equipped with seat belts goes back to at least 1977, when NHTSA tightened school bus safety standards. At that time, following extensive research and analysis, NHTSA instituted “compartmentalization” as the primary means of occupant protection in large school buses: strong, well-padded, well-anchored, high-backed, evenly spaced seats. Think of it like a carton of eggs… each egg is in its own compartment.
The record is impressive: American students are nearly eight times safer riding in a school bus than with their own parents and guardians in cars. The fatality rate for school buses is only 0.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) compared to 1.5 fatalities per 100 million VMT for cars.This impressive safety record is a result of the Department of Transportation’s requirements for compartmentalization on school buses. Moreover, the protective abilities of today’s school buses have been reaffirmed by two years of research.Yet, no matter how safe our children are on school buses, it is vitally important to constantly reassess existing safety measures.
Therefore, Congress requested that DOT investigate the safety value of installing safety belts on our nation’s school buses. An analysis of test data by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has concluded that lap belts appear to have little, if any, benefit in reducing serious-to-fatal injuries in severe frontal crashes. On the contrary, lap belts could increase the incidence of serious neck injuries and possibly abdominal injury among young passengers in severe frontal crashes. Any increased risks associated with the use of lap belts in small school buses are more than offset by preventing ejections. The use of the combination lap/shoulder belts could provide some benefit, unless misused. Lap/shoulder belts can be misused and NHTSA’s testing showed that serious neck injury and perhaps abdominal injury could result when lap/shoulder belts are misused.Other considerations, such as increased capital costs, reduced seating capacities, and other unintended consequences (like vandalism) associated with lap/shoulder belts could result in more children seeking alternative means of traveling to and from school. Given that school buses are the safest way to and from school, even the smallest reduction in the number of bus riders could result in more children being killed or injured when using alternative forms of transportation.
Currently their are 5 states that require seat belts to be installed on school buses, but not a single state requires the passengers to wear them.
You also have to think of the possibility of bus fires and buses that end up in water of some kind. In a fire a driver would not have time to unbuckle the small children, and what about the times when the driver is incapacitated from injury or unconcious? Also, if a bus is upside down there is too much pressure on the buckle to undo it.
Over the past 11 years, school buses have annually averaged about 26,000 crashes resulting in 10 deaths (that is only 10 per year) – 25 percent were drivers; 75 percent were passengers. A pretty fantastic record if you ask me. We will continue to seek to make the buses safer, but for now it looks like “compartmentalization” is the answer. I also am a school bus driver and will NOT have seat belts on my bus.
November 21st, 2006 at 11:36Ed: Thanks for your time.
There are certainly many issues with the use of passenger restraints: implementation, libertarianism, etc. What we do with school bus accidents is excellent for the vast majority of the rare crashes that buses have. What we’re seeking here in Huntsville today as an idea of whether or not some sort of restraint would have mattered in this accident, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, was an extremely unusual one. Let me be clear: the answer may well come back that nothing would have done any of these kids much good. But as an engineer and a citizen, I think that we have a duty to the populace to consider anew the issue. Maybe we come back to where we are today.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:22