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Sarah Dallof reporting Sunday's fatal bus accident in San Juan County is now causing some to wonder why buses don't have seat belts. Investigators haven't said whether seat belts would have made a difference in this tragedy, but most charter and school buses don't have them.
Buses are designed with high seats and cushioning to hold you like an egg in a crate. But serious injuries still happen, often during rollovers.
When you board a UTA bus, you don't have the option to buckle up. There aren't any seat belts, as there weren't in the accident Sunday. "It probably would have helped in that accident, but in public transit it rarely, rarely happens that there's any kind of rollover or any major kind of accident," explained UTA spokeswoman Carrie Bohnsack-Ware.
UTA says it has never had a rollover accident and that its buses exceed federal regulations on seat height and cushioning.
Another reason: There is no law requiring you to wear a seat belt on a bus. "People would see the seat belts and not wear them, and we'd say, ‘Please wear them,' and they'd say, ‘We don't have to,' and they're right," Bohnsack-Ware said.
School buses over 25,000 pounds aren't required to have belts either. "Even if we put them on all the school buses in America, perhaps we would save one life per year. That would cost several billion dollars," said Murell Marton, pupil transportation specialist for the Utah State Office of Education.
School officials say bus safety records speak for themselves. Twenty-five million students ride every year with an average of only five fatalities.
Students who ride with parents are eight times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash. "The sheer size of the bus, in comparison with other vehicles they may encounter on the roadway, is another safety feature of buses," Murell said.
Bus size protected students in a Florida crash earlier this week. The motorcyclist who hit the bus died, but no students were injured.
However, seat belt advocates argue buckling up is common sense and point to videos that illustrate violent rollovers.
The U.S. Transportation Secretary with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently announced a new safety proposal to make bus seats higher, require three-point seat belts in smaller school buses, and establish federal standards for school districts that choose to install seat belts. It did not make an overall recommendation for them.
