School Bus Safety

When I was growing up, most cars didn't have seat belts. I can remember driving down the street in our tank -- uh, car -- a '64 Chevy Impala, with my parents. No one had seat belts in those days. It's almost a little surreal to think about that today. Now, there are penalties for not having everyone in your car belted in. If an accident occurs and a child dies as a result of not being belted in, charges can be filed against the person responsible. As a mom, I was obsessive about infant car seats being belted in and painstakingly reading the instructions (and you know I hate reading instructions!)on how to install toddler seats. My children developed the habit of putting on seat belts as soon as they got into a vehicle. Most parents today are obsessive about making sure their children are safe in the car. So, we spend a lifetime doing that daily ritual, but when our kids get onto a school bus, there are no seat belts. Why are we okay with that? Is the cost factor worth the lives of children?

In our school district, as in many, parents are required to pay a transportation fee for their children to ride the bus to school. Between this fee and taxes, it would seem that seat belts should be in the budget. Perhaps some of Mr. Obama's health care bill costs could be cut if we had fewer injuries of children in school bus crashes.

After many fatal bus accidents,some people have begun to take notice. A research grant was awarded to the University Transportation Center for Alabama. I find this ironic. $300,000.00 was provided for a three-year pilot program. I'm not sure why we need a pilot program and dedicated research to tell us that children loose in a bus are not safe. We've all read the news reports of kids on buses getting up and causing problems, bullies, and other reasons school bus drivers have been distracted. Doesn't it make sense to provide safety belts for all children on buses for their safety and the safety of others? Wouldn't this allow the driver to pay more attention to the road and the actual driving of the bus, rather than having his or her eyes on the rearview mirror all the time the bus is moving? It makes perfect sense to me that rule number one on every school bus should be to buckle in. If a child is caught out of the seat belt, the bus doesn't move until they are back in. It wouldn't take long to train a bus full of children to stay in their seatbelts. Peer pressure is great in this respect. If a child is warned a few times, then they are no longer allowed to ride the bus for a period of time and a parent must find some other way to get them transported to school. This would keep everyone safer, and there wouldn't be kids getting up in a moving bus. There would be far less problems with bullying or injuries caused by quick stops or fender benders on the buses and our children would have a fighting chance if a bus were to have a rollover accident.

This seems like a no-brainer to me, but the experts have to do a study and report back a few years from now. They want to make sure their data is accurate. While they "get it right", I wonder if that time table will affect the lives (or shorten them) of some children around the country before seat belts become the norm. Why not cut to the chase and enact laws now that bus drivers must follow, just as parents do in cars every day? Is it fair to hold parents to a higher standard than a school bus driver? Is it reasonable or ethical to counter the due diligence of parents in their everyday routine with haphazard and downright dangerous conditions on the buses that transport their children to school each day? In my opinion, we should demand seat belts on our school buses and not take no for an answer. What is more important than the safety of our children? We can cut financial corners some other place. School buses should not even be manufactured without safety harnesses/seat belts.

For those of you with babies or small children, this is going to become a very important issue for you before you know it. Make your communities and local school districts aware of it now and your children will be safe later. It's hard enough to let them go off to school alone with they are little. They need to get there and get home safely.