School Bus Safety?

Here is a question I bet has been wieghing heavily on your mind.
WHAT is up with the seatbelt/carseat/lack of seatbelt on schoolbuses? Why don't the same rules apply to them as it does to us? If I drove around with 3 kids climbing on the seats I'd get a ticket.... huh? Are they safe?
These are all questions I was asking myself as I realized that my daughter would be going on a schoolbus for her first fieldtrip. Was I supposed to bring a carseat??? Of course, the thought didn't occur to me until late last night and the fieldtrip is today. I imagine children climbing over the seats, runnung up and down the aisles , as the bus zooms down the highway at 65 mles an hour...I mean isn't thatwhat we kinda did when WE were youngsters?
Anyway...here is the deal.
Apparently there is no safer way to transport a child than in a school bus. Fatal crashes involving school bus occupants are extremely rare events, even though school buses serve daily in every community—a remarkable 8.8 billion student "to-and-from school" trips annually. Every school day, some 450,000 yellow school buses transport more than 24 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. Said another way to give perspective to the huge magnitude of pupil transportation, the equivalent of the populations of Florida, Massachusetts and Oregon ride on a school bus twice every day—almost always without a serious incident.
The Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that every year more than 800 school-aged children are killed as occupants in other motor vehicles or as pedestrians or bicyclists during “normal school transport hours.” Most of these deaths could be prevented if children rode in school buses. Parents need to know that driving a child to school—or allowing them to ride to school with other teenagers--is not a safety smart decision—hands down, the school bus is the safest way to and from school. Even worse, allowing a child to drive themselves to school, or riding with other teenagers to school, increases the risk of fatality by 10 percent.
Occupant Fatalities
Last year, 5 children were killed as passengers in school buses (one each in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas and Texas). 45 states did not have a single child killed as a school bus passenger—an incredibly good national safety record. Between 1990 and 2000, an average of just six children each year died as school bus passengers. These tragedies typically involved unavoidable, severe circumstances.
Pedestrian fatalities
Last year, 26 children were killed as pedestrians getting on or off a school bus, or while waiting at the school bus stop. Other motorists illegally passing a stopped school bus remain a problem in every community and the school bus industry urges strict police and judicial enforcement against violators. Over the past 10 years, an average of 29 children were killed in school bus-related pedestrian accidents - struck while getting on or off a school bus
Modern school buses (those manufactured after April 1, 1977) are equipped with more safety equipment than any other vehicle on the road. This is by design because safety regulators and state pupil transportation officials always err on the side of providing an extra margin of safety. The size of the school bus alone gives it an important advantage in all but the most catastrophic circumstances.
Key federal safety requirements include:
Special passenger crash protection: Well-padded, high-back, energy-absorbing seats, as well as special requirements for wheelchair restraint systems. These seating systems provide “automatic protection” for young passengers. Additionally, school bus interiors are designed to reduce the chances of injury caused by sharp edges or body panels that may tear loose in a crash.
Better brakes: Brake systems that enable the school bus to stop in a shorter distance than other large vehicles.
Warning lights: Lights and reflective devices that indicate when the bus is loading and unloading passengers.
Special mirrors: Additional mirrors that allow the driver to see all critical areas directly in front of and along both sides of the school bus.
Swing out stop arms: A stop arm that extends out to the left side of the bus to warn motorists when the bus is loading or unloading passengers.
Emergency exits: Several emergency exits, based on the capacity of the school bus.
Rollover protection: Rollover protection that reduces the likelihood of a roof collapse and allows for operable emergency exits even after the roof is subject to extreme forces.
Fuel system protection: Protected fuel tanks, and fuel pump, fuel delivery system, emissions control lines and connections to protect against fuel spills in severe crashes.

Ok and now the big question...
Q: Why don’t school buses have seat belts?
A: School buses are the safest way to transport your children to and from school. The color and size of school buses make them easily visible and identifiable, their height provides good driver visibility and raises the bus passenger compartment above car impact height; and emergency vehicles are the only other vehicle on the road that can stop traffic like a school bus can.
School buses are carefully designed on a different transportation and protection model than the average passenger car. The children are protected like eggs in an egg carton – compartmentalized, and surrounded with padding and structural integrity to secure the entire container. The seat backs are raised and the shell is reinforced for protection against impact.
There are other differences to consider between your car and your child’s school bus. In your car, you can supervise your child and ensure that your child’s belt remains properly secured. School buses use what is called “passive restraint,” meaning all a child must do to be protected is simply sit down in a seat. School buses also must be designed to be multi-purpose, fitting everything from a six year-old to an 18 year-old senior on the high school football team in full uniform. Sometimes it’s two to a seat, other times three. Because of this, emphasis is placed on protecting the entire valuable cargo.

For twenty-three million students nationwide, the school day begins and ends with a trip on a school bus. The greatest risk is not riding the bus, but approaching or leaving the bus. Before children go back to school or start school for the first time, it is obviously important that parents/adults and children know school bus safety rules.
Every school bus is surrounded by a "danger zone." A danger zone consists of ten feet in front of the bus and on all other sides of the bus that are used for loading and unloading the bus. The precautions one can take are to:
Try to get to the bus stop early to avoid running at the moving bus.
Stand about 6 feet from the curb as the bus approaches.
When crossing in front of the bus wait for the driver to signal
Never walk behind the bus.

So I feel a little better...how about you?

For more info this is a great, easy to understand website: http://www.americanschoolbuscouncil.org


-SBH