Bad Arguments Against School Bus Seatbelts

Two thoughtful commenters on my post about school bus seatbelts pointed out one of the reasons opponents advance for not installing the belts: the need for a speedy evacuation.  Like other canards, which I will address, that is not only a specious argument but also a dangerous one.

First, I expect the number of children injured in failed bus evacuations pales beside the number of children injured for getting ejected or thrown around inside the bus.  Second, injured children inside the bus will actually impede a speedy evacuation, so the lack of belts is a hindrance.  Third, if you were really obsessed with fast evacuation, I imagine it would be entirely possible to design a central belt-release system.

As for other arguments, to insist that seat-back padding is sufficient for safety is to misapprehend the danger entirely.  The danger is that flying children will strike and injure themselves and others, or be ejected from the bus entirely.  Padding is a good idea, yes, but not a sufficient one.

The oft-advanced fear of drowning should the bus be submerged (also heard as an argument against car seatbelt use) is just a form of the speedy evacuation argument, but an even weaker one.  Simply compare the number of submerged bus accidents to the number of seriously-impacted bus accidents.  I couldn't handily find the numbers while composing this post, but I guarantee the former is a much smaller one.

Cost is one of the only rational arguments I know against the installation of belts.  The number of children killed in buses is small ("The fatality rate for school buses is 0.2 per 100 million miles traveled, more than seven times lower than for regular passenger vehicles." -WaPo), and there is a cost to fitting all buses with belts.  Of course, the price of a child's life is impossible to state (economists, please skip the valuation models - no one cares to see them), especially if it's your child.  There does have to be a cost-benefit analysis, of course, but we mustn't forget to add in the cost of mere injuries caused by unrestrained children hitting things.

Opponents of the belts yesterday advanced laughably weak arguments against them in the Washington Post.   One:

Riding a bus to school is safer than arriving on foot, by bicycle or in a parent's car, a 2002 study found.

"They're the safest vehicles on the street," said Tony Liberatore, who oversees a 1,300-bus fleet for Prince George's County public schools.

It is no argument to say that buses do not need seatbelts because they are already safe.  The proper question is whether they would be safer with the belts than without them.  Two:

"If it's something that made sense to everybody, we would have put them on all the buses 30 years ago," said Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a group based in Albany, N.Y., that represents public school bus operators.

If we waited for total agreement before acting on public policy issues, we wouldn't have any public policy at all (staunch libertarians, hold your email).  What kind of an argument is that?  We can't do it because not everyone agrees?  Because Mr. Martin obviously doesn't agree, his own disagreement causes the failure of the policy.  That's not an argument.  That's begging the question.

The failure of opponents to justify the lack of belts is probably why states are waking up to the need for them and passing appropriate laws.  For my part, I think when you throw in the societal good achieved by training children early in the consistent use of seatbelts, the equation isn't even close.  School buses should have seatbelts.

Your car does, and it's a much smaller target.

Comments

[theautoprophet]

This is not really an argument against seatbelts, more of an observation. Buses are VERY heavy. Unless a bus collides with another huge object (garbage truck, bus, or house) it will tend to decelerate slowly. I would guess that injury rates in bus crashes are therefore very low, for that reason alone. Also, because the are so huge, and are driven carefully, school buses are very rarely in accidents.

But,I do agree with you, as a matter of principle. Kids should be buckled in.

[My point]

Forget cost/benefit analysis and put this issue where it really belongs. If it's debatable whether seat belts will help, then I suggest that we require the manufacturers to have it as an OPTION. Let the school boards argue whether it's worth it to belt their kids.

[Tom Salow Busdriver]

I would fully agree to having seatbelts on school buses if there was a way to guarantee that every passenger would wear theirs all the time properly. I mean, how many people wear them all the time, proprly in their own vehicles? Think about it, the driver trying to drive safely AND make sure all the students(1 to 86 students)have their belts on?

[another driver]

There is a cost benefit model that would make sense. The money spent to add seat belts and maintain them for all of the buses in the country, could be better used on crash prevention, rather than crash protection, which is what seat belts are. If we used that block of money to help prevent the 40,000 teen fatalities caused by teen drivers every year, instead of the 5 fatalities and 9000 injuries from bus accidents each year (probably half caused by teen drivers) THEN we would be doing our society a great service. Instead of making an already difficult job harder. You drive a school bus sometime and then tell me that seat belts will make it safer.

[shithead]

seatbelts are gay ala all day

[and then]

everyone just shut the duck up. On 1 side we have safety for all students which will come with a nation debt to get the seatbelts in all of the buses and on the other side we have medical bills to pay for crash victims. You choose

[steven]

It's probably more of a cost and liability issue. If you have seat belts and they are not used then who is liable. Is it the child who took it off or the bus company? Its probably the bus company. The bus driver might also be ticketed. If they have seat belts they will have to be used. This would increase the time it takes to pick up the children increasing cost to pay drivers. If the only person on the bus is the driver then who can check. Should the driver leave their seat and the controls of the bus or are you going to have to pay for another person? Once again its cost and liability.

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