In the United States, where things are fast paced and seem to change on a minute-to-minute basis, one would think that Americans would be at the forefront of changes in bus safety. Alas, that seems to be where we lack our world-famous image of being on the cutting edge.
The odd thing is that buses are also the major mode of transportation for most of our country’s youth and elderly. We strap our kids into bullet proof car seats in state-of-the-art crash tested vehicles, but the moment they’re old enough to go to school we release them to be transported on a seatbeltless yellow tin can driven by a veritable stranger.
In cars, seat belts have been required since 1984, from pressure of a well-publicized story of popular country singer Barbara Mandrell suffering serious personal injuries after a car accident that almost left her crippled. She went to television to plead for seat belt safety and since then seat belts have been attributed to lowering the average traffic fatality rate to the lowest in recorded US history and fewer deaths overall than in the 50’s despite the fact that there are far more cars on the road.
But there are also more buses and far more passengers to transport. The most dangerous of these (according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are long distance coaching lines, which travel longer distances on highways at higher speeds. Many of these are single bus accidents and after reports of passengers being ejected while the driver remains safe in their belted seats the NHTSA has decided to take action.
NHTSA Announces Bus Seatbelt Requirement
The Obama Administration and NHTSA officials announced that they will require all commercial coaching buses to be retrofitted with seatbelts and any new buses manufactured must have belts from now on.
“Seat belts save lives, and putting them in motorcoaches just makes sense,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in announcing the proposal.
LaHood went on to note that 186 people have died in the 54 motorcoach crashes recorded between 1999 and 2008.
A federal requirement that commercial buses have seat belts would mark a milestone in what has been a decades-long fight by safety advocates and crash survivors to make highway bus crashes less deadly.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who primarily focus on mass transit as compared to NHTSA who focuses on individual vehicle safety, has been urging NHTSA for 11 years to strengthen coach safety regulations, including devising a means to keep passengers from being ejected from their seats during accidents, either through seat belts or some other safety system.
Of course, they are leaving the regulations in “proposal” mode to be approved by industry leaders. Though the motorcoach operators and manufacturers are opposed to any change in law, they will particularly be opposed to retrofitting the vehicles already manufactured.
Victim’s advocates are pushing especially hard for to keep retrofit provisions in the proposal. They say that by limiting seat belts to only new buses would mean motorcoaches built in recent years will be on the road for decades without safety restraints.
Bus safety advocates also want the government to require stronger bus roofs and shatterproof windows, as recommended by NTSB, to help prevent passengers from being thrown out.
They intend to prevent another accident like the one in January 2008 near Mexican Hat, Utah, where nine passengers were killed and 43 injured when their motorcoach took a turn too fast at night as they returned from a ski trip. The bus tumbled down an embankment, its roof was sheared off and everyone aboard ejected except for the driver, who was wearing the only seat belt on the bus, and one man who was pinned between two seats.
Wearing lap-shoulder belts on motorcoaches could reduce the risk for passengers of being killed in a rollover crash by 77%, according to NHTSA.
Bus Accident Attorneys
But many believe that just regulating motorcoaches does not go far enough. Particularly related to school buses and metropolitan mass transit. The school bus advocacy group National Coalition of School Bus Safety (NCSBS) estimate that 22 million children are transported by school bus to and from school every day.
They argue that the NHTSA does not take School Bus safety as they should is because the low injury and fatality statistics are misleading. The NCSBS cites the fact that the statistics are only based on public school rides to and from school and do not include the hundreds of thousands of field trips or the millions of children being transported to and from parochial schools.
All of the same large yellow buses with no seat belts are used in those instances, yet they have been seemingly overlooked. But not by Texas, who is coming up to a September 1st deadline for school districts to comply with a seatbelt requirement for all in-service school buses. Unfortunately, less than half of the buses have been fitted with seatbelts because all retrofit must be paid for by the state rather than the school district budget at an estimated $15,000 per bus and the state budget is looking like every other state budget in the country…bleak.
Then there is the question of metropolitan and rural mass transit such as Seattle Metro and Puget Sound Transit. Since the tragedy in the late 90’s when a Metro bus drove off of the Aurora bridge killing or severely injuring everyone on board, people have been pushing for more bus safety.
Of course what it all comes down to, like all things in life, is expense. Officials and state legislators point out the prohibitive costs to enact safety measures in both school and mass transit buses and it is only when they are forced to, through costly lawsuits, that they consider taking action. Some suggest that perhaps it would be cheaper to take measures prior to lawsuits since the cost of the project is always rising, it effects a large portion of the Washington State population, and would save lives.
Action in our state is yet to be seen. Until then, riders and parents of children hurt in bus accidents only have one avenue to seek justice and change and that is through litigation. If you or someone you know has sustained a personal injury in a bus accident some of the best advice you can get is to seek legal council from a law firm that is successful in bus accident litigation. Call Phillips Webster for a consultation.
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- School Bus Accidents
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