Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bam here just to give you a heads up.
Speaker 1: Today's episode involves super not graphic discussions of school kids
Speaker 1: and car crashes. It's about how laws might prevent injury,
Speaker 1: but go on and skip it if you want to.
Speaker 1: So in general, parents and lawmakers alike seem pretty okay
Speaker 1: with letting children hop on school buses every day without
Speaker 1: giving too much thought to the fact that those same
Speaker 1: kids would be firmly buckled up if they were riding
Speaker 1: in a car. In fact, for many of the younger,
Speaker 1: smaller kids, even regular seat belts wouldn't be sufficient in
Speaker 1: a car that have to have the additional protection of
Speaker 1: a car seat or booster seat. So why this disparity
Speaker 1: when it comes to school bus safety? Who decided that
Speaker 1: school buses don't need seatbelts? And is it even true?
Speaker 1: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or n h T
Speaker 1: s A, which tracks traffic and safety data, is one
Speaker 1: organization that has historically advocated that seat belts are not
Speaker 1: necessary on school buses, because the organization says, the school
Speaker 1: bus is the safest vehicle on the road. N h
Speaker 1: T s A points to data showing that in a
Speaker 1: ten year span from two thousand eighteen, a very small
Speaker 1: percentage of total road accidents and deaths occurred involving school transportation.
Speaker 1: School buses are designed for good crash and rollover protection.
Speaker 1: They protect kids through compartmentalization, which means spacing seats close together,
Speaker 1: as well as using seats with high energy absorbing backs
Speaker 1: to prevent children from being tossed around in case of
Speaker 1: a collision. School buses are also highly visible and have
Speaker 1: safety features like flashing red lights, crossview mirrors, and stop
Speaker 1: sign arms. Drivers stay on carefully planned routes and maintain
Speaker 1: slow speeds. Unfortunately, though deadly, school bus crashes can happen.
Speaker 1: In n h T s A administrator Mark rose Kind
Speaker 1: publicly reversed the organization's long standing position and began advocating
Speaker 1: for three point seat belts on every school bus, and
Speaker 1: after one tragic crash in in Morris County, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: involving two deaths and forty three injuries, the National Transportation
Speaker 1: Safety Board opened a full investigation into school bus safety.
Speaker 1: The board's report concluded that quote to provide the best
Speaker 1: protection for all occupants of large school buses. The remaining
Speaker 1: step is for each state to require the installation of
Speaker 1: lap shoulder belts in all new large school buses. Today,
Speaker 1: seat belts are only federally mandated on small school buses
Speaker 1: or those weighing ten thousand pounds or about kilos or less.
Speaker 1: States are allowed to decide whether to mandate them on
Speaker 1: the rest of their school buses, and currently only eight
Speaker 1: states Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York,
Speaker 1: and Texas have laws requiring seat belts on large school buses,
Speaker 1: though many others are considering similar legislation. Opponents obviously want
Speaker 1: to keep kids safe, but point to the cost not
Speaker 1: just of buying and installing the belts, but of those
Speaker 1: belts reducing buses passenger capacity, which would mean school districts
Speaker 1: would need more buses in their fleets. And since most
Speaker 1: school buses are on the road for at least ten
Speaker 1: and often up to twenty years, it's unlikely that tightly
Speaker 1: budgeted school districts would choose to retrofit older buses due
Speaker 1: to those costs, which means it would potentially take decades
Speaker 1: for new legislation requiring seatbelts to take effect across a
Speaker 1: fleet as new buses slowly replace older ones. For now,
Speaker 1: it's unclear weather federal standards will change, but states are
Speaker 1: still free to set tougher restrictions as they see fit.
Speaker 1: Parents may take some comfort in knowing that school buses
Speaker 1: are the most regulated vehicles on the road, and as
Speaker 1: a result, students riding them to school are statistically about
Speaker 1: seventy times safer than they would be traveling to school
Speaker 1: by car. Today's episode was written by Series three Wit
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler clang A brain Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
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