By Del Stover
6/7/05 -- For school officials in Liberty, Mo., it was a nightmare: On the morning of May 9, a school bus carrying 53 students rammed into two cars stopped at a red light. The drivers of the cars were killed, and 23 students and the bus driver were injured.
School officials rushed to the scene -- only a few blocks from the school system’s main administrative office. There, they learned that several students had suffered life-threatening injuries and would be rushed to local emergency rooms by medical helicopters.
“Kids were crying and bleeding and crying for their mommies,” one witness told the Kansas City Star.
It was a tragic accident, but as recent events make clear, it was hardly unique:
• In Arlington, Va., a school bus with 15 children collided with a trash truck. One child was killed at the scene, and another died in the hospital. Fourteen were injured.
• Twenty students were injured when their bus was struck from behind by a truck in Belleville, Ill.
• Six children were injured, one seriously, when a school bus carrying 37 students was struck by a slow-moving train in Hannibal, Mo.
• In New York City, a school bus carrying 44 students flipped over on a highway. Only minor injuries were reported.
• Near Ripley, Okla., a 16-year-old girl was killed when her bus struck a pickup truck pulling a cattle trailer. The truck driver also died.
This string of accidents has raised concerns about the safety of the nation’s nearly half million school buses and added new fuel to the debate over the wisdom of equipping buses with seat belts.
In Missouri, which sustained three school bus crashes last month, Gov. Matt Blunt announced the creation of a new task force to study school transportation safety, including a look at seat belts and the best practices of school districts with good safety records.
The crashes “are a tragic and unfortunate reminder that is it is not enough to assume school buses are safe,” Blunt says. “It is not enough to hope that existing laws, regulations, and inspection processes are sufficient.”
Yet, despite such concerns, transportation safety experts say the recent spate of accidents is not cause for alarm. Modern school buses are built solid, with padded seats designed to protect children. Buses rarely roll over, and, most of the time, they travel slowly on their routes.
“School buses are a very safe way for children to go to school,” says Bill Hall, manager of occupant protection programs at the University of North Carolina’s Highway Safety Research Center. “Overall, it’s safer in a school bus than in cars driven by parents.”
On average, only six children are killed annually while riding a school bus, says Robin Leeds, an industry specialist with the National School Transportation Association. That compares to 800 who die traveling to school by car, bicycle, or walking.
“Those are pretty compelling statistics,” she says, noting that more than 400 students die each year in cars driven by teenagers.
“If a board of education wants to improve its transportation safety record, the best thing they can do is keep kids from driving to school,” she says. “That’s where most of the fatalities occur.”
Almost every high-profile bus accident renews the debate about seat belts on buses. At present, only a handful of states require new buses to have seat belts. California will require them starting in July, and several states are considering such mandates.
But safety experts question whether the money required to equip buses with seat belts could be better spent on other safety measures.
If all buses were equipped with lap-shoulder restraints -- at a cost of $3,000 to $5,000 per bus -- statistics suggest only one life would be saved per year. And that would be true only if belts were worn properly and regularly by students.
“We have to be very clear about the distinction between lap belts and lap-shoulder belts,” Leeds warns. “Because lap belts, in and of themselves, can be dangerous to young children.”
In May, a meeting of student transportation organizations ended with a recommendation for a more cost-effective safety measure: Raise the height of padded seat backs to lower the risk of taller students being thrown over the seat in front of them.
“If [policy makers] want to do lap-shoulder belts, then they may have to make some sacrifices in their transportation programs to afford them,” Leeds says.
“But if they decide to [pay for them] by increasing walking distances or transporting fewer kids,” he says, “it will give them a net negative safety benefit, because more kids will be taking more dangerous ways to school.”