School Buses
The question: How can school buses possibly be safe, they’re big, there are few if any seat belts, children are small- if there was a crash the children would be hurled all around the inside of the bus? Explain to me why I should feel my child is safe riding a school bus.
The answer: Student transportation in the form of motorized vehicles has been around for just short of a hundred years. Statistically a child is safer being transported in a school bus than in a family vehicle. Consider this:
Annual school bus transportation statistics:
- 450,000 public school buses
- 24 million students transported
- 4 billion miles traveled
- 10 billion student trips
- 20 billion times a student gets on or off
While catastrophic school bus crashes have occurred, they are rare events. Most school bus crashes are minor, and in most crashes involving passenger cars and light trucks, the school bus has the advantage of its larger size and weight. As a result, many more people are killed or injured each year in vehicles that crash into school buses than are killed or injured in the school buses. It is difficult, if not impossible, to develop ways to protect school bus occupants in catastrophic crashes, such as those involving trains and heavy trucks. The crash forces in those crashes are so great that any reasonable structural design cannot maintain the integrity of the vehicle, which is one critical component of occupant crash protection. (COPY; 2000 National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services.)
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The question still exists: Why do school buses protect? This answer gets a little more complicated. Very often the basic explanation revolves around a term “compartmentalization,” comparing the students in a school bus to eggs in a carton. There is more to why a school bus protects.
There are Federal standards that apply to school buses. As a result of the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and the School Bus Safety Amendments of 1974, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has issued 36 Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) which apply to school buses. These standards cover a range of components and systems, e.g., brakes, steering, glazing, lights, fuel system integrity, mirrors, heaters/defrosters, compressed natural gas containers, etc., and apply to all types of motor vehicles. Many of these federal standards have unique requirements for school buses.
The design and construction of today's school buses are a direct result of both the FMVSSs which apply to school buses and the guidelines adopted by the National Conferences on School Transportation, as well as some requirements that are unique to particular states or local school districts. While today's school buses do not look much different than their predecessors of 30-40 years ago, they are dramatically different. The improvements made to school buses in the past decades, as well as improvements in driver training, school bus maintenance, and school bus operating procedures, have been responsible for the outstanding safety record of school transportation. Well-trained school bus drivers avoid many crashes. (COPY; 2000 National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services.)
The following four standards are unique to school buses.
FMVSS No. 220, "School Bus Rollover Protection," which specifies the minimum structural strength of buses in rollover-type accidents;
FMVSS No. 221, "School Bus Body Joint Strength," which specifies the minimum strength of the joints between panels that comprise the bus body and the body structure;
FMVSS No. 222, "School Bus Passenger Seating and Crash Protection," which establishes requirements for school bus seating systems for all sizes of school buses, and provides minimum performance requirements for wheelchair securement/occupant restraint devices and establishes a requirement that wheelchair locations be forward facing; and
FMVSS No. 131, "School Bus Pedestrian Safety Devices," which requires school buses be equipped with an automatic stop signal arm on the left side of the bus to help alert motorists that they should stop their vehicles because children are boarding or leaving a stopped school bus.
FMVSS No. 222 brings us full circle to the term “compartmentalization.” Think back to your days on the good ol' school bus. Remember how those rigid green seats were wedged closer together than on even the cheapest no-frills airline? That's compartmentalization in action. Sitting in "strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing high seat backs," passengers are effectively protected from crashes. Of course, the method can't prevent all injuries, but the NHTSA argues it's the best possible solution. Several studies have shown seat belts would provide "little, if any, added protection."
So the initial question, Why should I feel my child is safe riding in a school bus? The answer is as simple as it is complex. The data available confirms and statistics support the fact that children are safe riding in school buses.
National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services www.napt.org
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration www.nhtsa.gov
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