(Sort of belongs in car chat)

I just found out that school buses still don't have seat belts and I am astonished. How can this be possible? They are yellow, have onboard camera's, flashing lights when they are approaching a stop and more when they stop, strobes on the top but no seat belts.

And more astonishing, FAA reg's require you to buckle up on the airplane. I really don't get this.

The safety of so many children is at stake. Why?

 

My bus have seatbelts, always have, just no one is required to wear one

 

Studies have shown that school buses should have seatbelts. I think its not require because cash strapped schools will often fill a bus to max capacity, thats 3 to a seat and theres no room for seatbelts. Thats how my middle school bus was. It was terrible.

 

I was always told that in 99% of bus accidents, the bus was so heavy that it wasnt slowed down much at all if it ran into something or if something ran into it due to its mass

 

When I was in highschool our bus had seatbelts, granted no-one ever wore them.

And to reply to Bean's post. One time when I was about to get off at my stop, just as I got up, the whole bus bounced up and down. When we were evacuated off the bus, we were informed some dude had a stroke or heart attack and rear ended the bus, sending half his car under our bus. They had to use the jaws of life to pull him out. As for the rocking, it was shakey, but not enough to throw you around.

 

Unless each individual person gets their own individual seat, then I doubt that they'll ever require seat belts. When I rode a school bus, there was just a three person bench that was only built to fit two people. So, with that being said, it would have been impossible to buckle up even if we wanted to in those seats. The person on the aisle had half of their butt hanging off the seat in those configurations...

 

Woah, three to a seat? That sucks, i demand my own seat on the bus and i get it, when there are others sitting 4 to a seat, in the words of the senior still riding the bus (i feel sort of bad for him,no license still) "Joe runs the show"

 

The school busses here had seat belts back in 90's and my so said the principal would get on the bus and make sure you fastened the belts now from 1999 to 2003 he never mentioned if the busses had belts or not.

 

this is one reason why you should have seat belts on school buses


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz-dtbYx2DI



second reason why

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdKofJlNOQM&NR=1

 

^ haha
we don't have belts on the yellow school buses.. never had anyone try and fit more than 2 kids/bench

 

I'm kind of older so our school buses didn't have seat belts. In fact, the seat belt law came out in my Junior year in HS. Anyway, there was never a time when they put 3 to a seat. The seats were made for two, so only two to a seat. If I were a parent in that school district I would raise safety concerns with stuffing 3 kids on a seat and over stuffing the bus.

 

i got a good laugh out of the second one

 

This has become a state by state debate, a couple of states have mandated them, hopefully they will all follow suit very soon.

 

we never had a seat belt in our schoolbuses.

where's the fun in life w/o a little risk?

 

It is really scare that this is the case. If one of these buses slips off of the road then you could have a lot of fatalities. I just can't imagine in this day and age that we don't have them.