Do school buses have all the necessary safety measures?

An important part missing from safety equipment is collision avoidance systems. This technology is currently only available to high-end vehicles. Hopefully, in the next decades buses, trucks and cars will have it and the cost in lives and damages resulting from accidents will be greatly reduced.

They don’t have seatbelts, which they say is on purpose.

US school bus safety standards are regulated under Federal law, regulated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. The safety regulations pertaining specifically to school buses are contained within the general motor vehicle safety regulations. These are extremely specific testing standards.

If the school buses were manufacutred and sold to schools they absolutely meet the Federal safety satndards – or there would be fines and maybe people sentenced to prison terms for fraud.
If you are asking “Can we do more?”, the answer is “Yes – If you are willing to pay for it.”
Seatbelts would help in a very limited number of cases. But they would cause problems in many more. What happens if a rowdy student refuses to belt up? Does the driver not drive and make all the other students late? Will the driver be charged for driving with an unbelted passenger? Would it be the driver’s job to police the bus and make sure everyone is belted? Ugh!
Eventually buses will have crash avoidance capability. It will slowly be phased in as old buses are taken out of service.

I’d make the kid liable for not wearing the seatbelt, not the driver. That way the bus driver could drive with unbelted kids and possibly flag down a cop to deal with it. I’d want to be belted in. I’ve been in wrecks and I know the only reason I’m still here was the belts.

Seat belts seem like they would be important but I’ve never seen them on a bus.

I’ve seen seat belts on school buses for over 2 decades.

I was using the seat belts as an example. I can’t see them making kids liable. How would they enforce it? The kids are minors.

@Cupcake. How do they make sure the kids wear them? Or is it not required?

Here’s one you’ll like. This is not safety related but it highlights a regulation recently phased in. As part of being green, NY is pushing biodiesel blends. A couple of the nearby school districts here have been using it and are making a big deal of how they are “saving the plant” . They were told they needed to add heated filters (at high cost) if they use biodeisel blends since it can gel at cold temps. They ignored it. The buses worked fine all summer and fall. But, when the temp dropped last month, as predicted, several buses had filters gel causing the engine to stop. they had to get replacement buses to get the kids to school, tow the buses back to the heated garage. That turned out to be a very expensive load of ‘green’ fuel.

@LuckyGuy I was struggling with having the driver responsible for the seat belt enforcement. One against 30 or 40 or more kids. Minors get busted if they break the law. I had a client that converted his car to biofuel. He had the same problem in the cold.

@LuckyGuy Not required.

I don’t know about other states, but I know Colorado and Illinois have adult bus monitors riding the buses so the driver can concentrate on driving and not worry about discipline or other issues.

@Cupcake Thanks! So they put the seat belts on the bus but the students are not required to wear them? Does anyone know the compliance rate?. Do they track it?
If kids aren’t wearing them we taxpayers spent a lot of money for nothing. Plus the bus is hauling around a lot of extra weight for the belts, mounting bolts, and floor mounts – not to mention the inspections. That hurts fuel economy and maintenance costs. If the kids wear them, fine. But if not, it sure is a waste.

@Adirondackwannabe I’ll bet your client “forgot” to use a heated fuel filter, too. They are expensive so they are easy to forget – until the temperature drops below 15F. But that never happens, right? .

He didn’t have a heated filter. He switched back to diesel when it was cold. And last month 15F was a balmy day. I hadn’t thought of a heated filter.

@Adirondackwannabe And how did he get the biodiesel blend out in time for the cold? Did he plan that far ahead? I guess some of the school buses had filled up a few days earlier and still had a lot of blend in the tank. Oops.

His started on diesel, warmed up, and then switched over to biodiesel. If it was too cold for bio he could switch back to diesel. He designed it himself.

Maybe they could equip school buses with harnesses similar to those on rides at amusement parks? That come down over your shoulders and lock in place, only released by the driver? That would be safe and cool their jets.

Not all states have made these security measures in school buses compulsory. From seat belts, GPS tracking tool and RFID tags in student cards, there are a lot many important things that are to be considered by school management and parents. And one great thing is that some states in US has made RFID tags compulsory too.. you can see some more information from a recent blog on school safety