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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Vehicles are required to have seatbelts... Except school busses. Because F you, kids.
Buses are not required to have seatbelts because they have a far greater mass than a car, making it harder to, you know, fling people out of a window/into the seat in front of them when a crash occurs, which is what seatbelts are designed to prevent. Oh, and you really think a single bus driver can make 20-30 kids keep their seatbelts on during the ride to school? This is mission control, please come back to Earth.
It's the culture. My kids school in Taiwan has a full bus of kids with their seatbelts on as soon as they get in.
Easily. Just hit a curb kids ain’t that dumb.
You're arguing that it's better not to have seatbelts because the driver can't guarantee that 100% of the students will buckle up? That's hilarious.
Semis have a greater mass than a bus, yet the driver and passenger both have seat belts. Other countries put seat belts on their busses. I'd love to see some data backing up your argument.
People like making up reasons and presenting it as fact on the internet lol, but actually working in a school, here are the real main reasons. Busses are compartmentalized and busses have padding everywhere on the seats and they're densely packed so it's usually safe enough without belts if kids get flung around. They also typically drive slower than cars and no seatbelts make evacuations easier and faster for students. They are also very heavy. I've been in a bus that's been hit before and it was like someone just slightly shook the bus while the car's headlight was busted. The paperwork being done took longer than taking us home. The last reason is probably the most believable, but it's to cut costs, too. Busses with belts can range $8-15k more expensive and school faculty members are underpaid enough already.
Yet, the driver has a seatbelt. Greater mass means a greater kinetic momentum. Lol, the irony of your username.
The driver has a seatbelt because they are not sandwiched between seats explicitly designed to absorb energy and reduce injury. They have a steering column, dashboard, and windshield in front of them. There is no irony in their username, just ignorance on your part for speaking about a topic you know nothing about.
The seatbelt isn't there just to keep you from flying through the windshield in a crash. It also keeps you in the proper seating position so you can reach the controls at all times, and reduces fatigue because you don't need to brace yourself as much when going around corners or over bumps.
Do you know why?
Full shoulder belts are impractical in full sized school busses, and lap belts have proven to be as harmful as they are helpful. Smaller van-type busses are typically equipped with shoulder belts now, because they are smaller and occupants are more likely to be ejected from a seat in an impact.
Full size busses are designed to prevent this, and are quite safe. Seat belts have been used in full sized busses in the past, and they were found to be more likely to cause harm by either entrapping a passenger or causing direct damage to the hips, upper legs, lower spine, and abdominal organs. Seat belt entrapment has been considered as a possible factor in the deaths of passengers killed in busses that caught fire.
This is still very much a controversial topic. There are certainly instances where seatbelts may have prevented deaths and injuries, but by and large, school busses are one of the safest modes of transportation on the road in the United States. Numerous studies have been done on this subject. Almost any time a bus accident happens that gets significant coverage, people start demanding answers about "why didn't that bus have any seatbelts?", and the results are pretty much the same every time: because in the long run, they don't improve anything. Everything else about a school bus is designed to protect the occupants.
I recommend really looking into this subject yourself. It seems counterintuitive, but when you see the data for yourself, it makes sense.
Sounds more like a lot of effort went into fabricating excuses to not make that expense, excuses which are directly contradicted by the National Transportation Safety Board:
https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/safety-topics/Pages/schoolbuses.aspx
NTSB seems to think seatbelts would be an upgrade to just having compartmentalization and provide children with better internal safety. Thanks for making me look into it!
This is strange, I distinctly remember school buses have seatbelts when I was on it. Has things changed this much?
Think for a minute and you might realize why seatbelts won't work on a school bus.
No, sorry. I’m going to need you to explain it, if the reason is other than money.
Aside from the greater mass making ejection more difficult. If there's a fire, evacuating 30 or so kids is going to be much harder when you have to get them out of their seatbelts.
You forgot about the fact that buses have bigger windows and the passengers inside them, kids in this case, have smaller mass. Therefore I would argue that the chances of ejection are not less than a typical car.
Plus, pretty sure those old big muscle cars and luxury cars had more mass than a typical family hatchback and guess why we still got seatbelts?
That happened in Ohio. I've seen the interviews with witnesses talking about listening to kids screaming while they burned alive in the middle of the interstate.
When we say school bus it's an "everyone has a seat and is sat down" scenario.
With that established, I'm going to tell you that pretty much every EU country that runs school buses of that scenario does have seatbelts. We definitely do in the UK.
It clearly is possible. I'm not saying that the busses aren't otherwise built for safety in every way like many other commenters are saying, and maybe they wouldn't even provide extra benefit (which I doubt, but I see some commenters are citing studies), but it is definitely possible to add and realistic for kids to use seatbelts.