What’s up with Buses and Seat Belts?

What’s up with Buses and Seat Belts?

The cops are really out enforcing seat belt laws these days and I understand it’s for our own safety and putting on my own seat belt is second nature for me, but what’s up with seat belts on School buses and Seat belts in RV’s?

When you think about a whole bus load of kids doing kid things and see stories in the news about a school bus rollover you would think a simple way to keep those kids from getting hurt worse than the initial accident would be to put some seat belts on those kids and make them wear them.

The government contends that heavier vehicles over 10,000 lbs with higher center of gravity are safer vehicles and that seat belts don’t work the same way in these vehicles as they do in cars. The National Safety Council says a bus is about 40 times safer than the family car.

The designers of buses know that children can’t be trusted to wear a seat belt properly and Children vary is height and weight so much it would be nearly impossible to provide a universal system that wouldn't cause more damage than it would prevent.

For now the cost of using a seat belt type of system outweighs the benefit and studies have shown that the use of seat belts in busses doesn't reduce severe accident damage in school buses, statically children are still safe in a school bus than they are in their parents cars.