Buckling your seatbelt in a car is a law in Arizona, and Arizona Sen. Barbara McGuire, D-Florence, believes the same law should be applied to school buses.
If passed, SB 1115 would require all school buses purchased in Arizona to have seat belts starting in January 2015.
“We require our kids to be buckled up in our cars; it does not make sense to me why we wouldn’t have the same safety feature on our buses,” McGuire said.
Terry Crosier, director of transportation at Phoenix Elementary School District #1, said buses are already designed to be safe in case of an accident.
The seat backs are cushioned to protect riders and the seats are placed close together to help lessen the amount of movement that occurs when the driver has to make a sudden stop. The buses are also higher off the ground than most cars, changing where on the vehicle the impact occurs.
But McGuire said that isn’t enough.
“The seats that are currently in place do provide some protection, however, the steel frames that hold them in place, if a driver has to make a sudden stop, they are not held in place,” McGuire said. “They could go flying out of the seat. (Children) could hit the frame, they could break a collarbone, they could knock teeth out, etc.”
McGuire also said studies have shown that seat belts could have prevented deaths in past rollover accidents.
Crosier does not think that the addition of seat belts is going to be effective on buses.
“Students aren’t going to stay buckled. We can walk up and down the rows before we leave, but that doesn’t guarantee that they are going to stay buckled through the whole ride,” Crosier said.
McGuire said bus drivers will give written notices to passengers who are caught unbuckled during the ride. After three notices the child will be suspended from riding the bus, making parents find another way to get their child to school, incentivizing the importance of buckling.
Assistant superintendent of Phoenix Elementary School District #1 Tom Lind said he thinks the seat belts may be beneficial for students in the case of an accident, but other changes could also make students safer. For example, seat backs are generally not high enough to support the necks of taller students.
“I would worry about students getting whip lash,” Lind said.
Buses currently running without seat belts will not be affected by the bill. Instead new buses will have seat belts installed and those will slowly replace the current fleet, McGuire said.
Contact the reporter at abdaly@asu.edu.
