In my state (OK) school bus drivers are required to wear seatbelts, yet there are no seatbelts for the students. Why is that?
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- retroglide -
ANSWERS: 16
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Kids bounce better than the driver... Ok, here's a real answer, some people have no sense of humor... Buses are designed differently than other automobiles. The seats are lower, the backs are higher and they are tighter together, the windows are higher and there's emergency exits on the top and back. Can you imagine in an emergency situation having to run back and undo 50 seatbelts for 4 year olds while the bus is overturned or filling with water? The kids grab on to the seat in front and hold on. Plus a bus is not exceeding the speed limit laws like most drivers and it's sheer mass can keep the kids safe unless it's hit by a semi-truck or landed on by a plane.
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At a guess, different applications of the law. The employer of the driver have a duty of care to the driver as an employee - just as the employers of any other users of dangerous machinery. So they have to fit, and require the use of, the best safety equipment they could reasonably find. Lots of case law for this from industry. However, there has probably not been a case shoeing that the school system has the same duty of care to students, who are neither employees nor customers. IMO, and in the UK it is so, they should provide seatbelts and make some effort to get students to use them.
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I wondered about that too. Who will be liable if a child doesn’t wear the eat belt? Will the bus driver make sure every time children board the bust that they are buckled-up? Certainly there should be belts for sure and educate children about it.
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I think LetMeThink is correct here. Say the school does provide seatbelts and there is an accident where a child dies whose death could have been prevented by the seatbelt. Who is liable? The parents will blame either the driver or the school. If the driver is blamed, he will blame the school. If the school is blamed, they will blame the driver. Humans love the blame game. Best answer is to remove the seatbelts. No one is liable because the school bus has never had seatbelts.
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It has to do with the design of the bus itself. The height of the seats on a school bus are higher than the standard impact area of most vehicles. The driver must wear a seatbelt because it is their responsibility to care for the safety of the passengers.
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New York State has seatbelts on their school buses
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Buses are built to be very safe. The driver is responsible for passengers of all ages. Younger children could have a problem unbuckling the seat belt if an emergency occurred where the bus needed to be evacuated. (i.e. Fire) In those types of situations seatbelts are a bad idea. Some buses now have seatbelts in the first few rows, so the driver has time to help in emergencies. The Buses are very heavy, and high off the ground. It does not seem fair, but a lot of thought goes in to this when carrying the most important cargo.
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There have been many tests done on busses and the average time that a student is on the bus, and the probability of a licensed driver school bus driver getting into an accident is minimized taking into account that the bus is above most vehicles and the safety features in the seats combined with the average speed of the bus,that accidents are minimised to the onboard occupants, that the need for seatbelts pose more of risk to the students than not having them, meaning kids start to impair the seatbelts by improper latching, improper fits for small children, to the department of highways and public saftey they are not mandatory in most north america
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Money. Both for the State and the school bus company/State contractor. Also The State in it's omniscience and omnibenevolence of course knows it is better able to care for children than are their parents, and school busses are obviously so much safer than family vehicles, and school bus drivers are of course better, safer, and more responsible drivers than parents. So seatbelts are only necessary for children riding in the back of private vehicles driven by their parents or the people parents trust with the job.
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Bus drivers are harder to come by
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I agree with most answers here. Plus, In most cases, the bus will not have much damage done to it because it is so huge. A car or even a truck won't hurt it too bad in the case of a crash. Also, kids won't wear the seatbelts, and then they could be harmful flying around in the case of a crash. And, it would be harder for kids to get out through emergency exits, and it would take more time to evacuate the buses.
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childern are expendable lol. really the problem comes with how size differs between kids. for seat belts to be effective you have to be big enough to use them (booster seats for small kids) the bus carries from k-12 grade it's hard to get a system to work for all students in the same bus
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The seats are designed with high, cushioned backs and are squished really close together so kids are safer, supposedly.
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Pretty sure it's like that in most states. I drove school bus for a little while when I was younger and I used to have that same question. From what I've heard, school bus manufacturers, along with the DOT have determined that in most scenarios which would require a fast exit of the bus, it's safer to have high-backed seats with no belts than for (up to) 72 children to fumble with a belt in the case of an emergency. It does kind of make you wonder about roll-overs and side impact crashes, though...
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Don't get me started. I've been fighting with my state schools over this for over 20 years and no one will tell me why. School buses should ALL have seat belts and children should be required to wear them. Personally, I think there are no belts on the buses because jurisdictions fear being sued over accidents if the children aren't buckled in. By not having seat belts in buses, they avoid the liability and put the onus on the parents for allowing their children to ride knowing there are no seat belts.
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I beleave the real truth is money it would cost to much. I seen a bus driver have a stroke or something and pass out going down a road,the bus hit a hole off the side of the road and kids went flying plum up to the celing,one kid finally put his hands on the brake and stoped it.The sad part is I live in Tn.and the law will give me a ticket if I dont have my own kid buckeld up.go figure.
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