Should school buses be required to have seat belts?

Yes. I don’t understand why they don’t.

For safety reasons (‘natch)

Bully’s would kill other children with them (‘natch)

Nah. The only time they’re really useful is in a roll-over. In a typical collision, the worst thing that’s likely to happen is the kid bounces into the back of the big padded seat in front of them. From experience, that’s less painful than the whiplash they’d get in a similar crash with a lap belt on.

Also, re: bullies hitting the other kids with them—Seriously. That shit hurts. My nephew and I used to get into fist fights on the bus, so we’ve both taken a buckle to the head a couple of times.

yes

I always worry about my son on the school bus – he’s two, no seat belts! It’s a cultural thing. Here private ownership of vehicles is a relatively recent thing, and safety doesn’t seem to be such an issue. I always laugh at my friends who complain that I take my son out in the rain and cold, when they drive around with their toddlers in their laps.

If buses were to have belts, they should have full, proper seat belts as opposed to those lap belts. I assume lap belts are not as safe. @MacBean mentions his experience, but I’d love to see some research on the matter.

Requiring buses to have belts is one thing. Would the students be required to use them? School bus drivers have a hellacious job that I wouldn’t want any day. (And I babysit murderers all day!) Can you imagine trying to make all those kids buckle up? Especially the darlings beyond elementary school age.

The bus driver would also be slowed by assisting smaller kids with the belts in the event of having to evacuate the bus quickly.

@Divalicious Whether or not the school chooses to enforce it, surely the option should be there?

They should lock’em in with a roller coaster harness!

@Divalicious: The buses in my school district had lap belts and it was up to the individual driver to decide if they wanted to try to make the kids wear them or not. I think we had at least one driver use just about every possible method. Everything from refusing to move the bus until the kid who just got on was buckled, to rolling up the buckles and stuffing them into the seats and sending kids to the principal’s office for taking them out. A lot (actually, as far as I know, all) of the drivers who made the kids buckle up chose bus monitors and had them in assigned seats evenly spaced out on the bus, and they helped the littler kids and reported anyone who unbuckled and stuff like that. Most drivers just made you stay seated. (My driver didn’t. I always stood with my back against the window, resting my arms on the backs of my seat and the one in front of me.)

@Ltryptophan: haha That would be awesome during fire drills, and instances where the bus actually has to be evacuated.~