Seat Belts on School Buses: Overview of the Issue (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Aug. 31, 2007 |
| Report Number |
RL34153 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
David Randall Peterman, Resources, Science, and Industry Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
It is estimated that 25% of student trips to schoolâ5.5 billion trips each yearâare made on school buses. Nationwide, an average of seven school bus passengers die each year in crashes. Buses have the lowest death rate of any mode of transporting children to school in the United States.
Federal safety standards for school buses, established in 1977, require seat belts only on buses whose fully loaded weight is less than 10,000 pounds (Type II), but not on buses whose fully loaded weight is more than 10,000 pounds (Type I). The vast majority of Type I school buses weigh 24,000 pounds or more when fully loaded. In addition to their greater mass and structural safety features, these large school buses employ compartmentalizationâa passive protection system that uses padded, high-backed seats spaced closely together in rowsâto protect passengers. Compartmentalization has been found to be an effective system in protecting passengers in front- and rear-end crashes, provided the passengers are properly seated, but it is less effective in protecting them in side-impact and rollover crashes, when they may be thrown out of the compartments.
The occupant protection value of seat belts on large school buses has been debated for decades. Advocates contend that seat belts would reduce injuries to and deaths of passengers, in part through keeping them within their compartments in side-impact and rollover crashes. These advocates, who include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Coalition for School Bus Safety, and the National PTA, also contend that seat belts would provide other benefits, including improving student behavior on buses and reducing distractions to drivers, as well as reinforcing use of seat belts that might increase seat belt use in other vehicles. Others, including the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services and the National Association of School Transportation, caution against requiring that seat belts be installed on large school buses. They note that studies have found that adding seat belts to large school buses is not a cost-effective safety improvement. These studies indicate that lap belts may provide no net safety benefit, and lap/shoulder belts might save one or two lives and prevent several serious injuries each year, at an annual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars for adding the belts. Also, since adding lap/shoulder belts can reduce the seating capacity of large school buses, some students might be displaced from school buses to more dangerous forms of transportation unless additional buses have been purchased to maintain existing seating capacity, further increasing the cost of the requirement. Given the relatively small number of deaths to school bus passengers, these observers contend that other measures could have greater safety benefits for school children.
Several states have passed laws requiring that large school buses be equipped with lap belts, with the result that perhaps as much as 35% of the nation's school bus fleet is already required to have some form of seat belts; only California currently requires the safer and more expensive lap/shoulder belts. Federal funding is generally not available to help communities purchase school buses. This report will not be updated.
