Three seat belts in a Western Boone School Corp. bus have helped control student behavior, but the administration is not yet sure what that means for the school district.
For about a month, students have been able to buckle into a single seat at the front of a school bus that serves Western Boone Jr.-Sr. High School and Granville Wells Elementary School. The seat has three three-point buckles that stretch across the user’s lap and torsos, said WeBo transportation director Cecil Gosser. It can fit two high school students and three elementary students.
“Six months ago, I would have been adamantly opposed to seat belts on buses,” he said. “But we’re starting to learn more and more about safety. A shoulder and lap belt keeps kids in position and in proper alignment for the seat to provide them with maximum protection in case of side impact or a rollover.”
To install the pilot belts, the old seat back had to be removed and a new one installed with the capacity for the shoulder belts. The cost of the equipment was $380, and labor plus the new back probably drove that price up to around $450, Gosser said.
Though the seat belts seem to have been a success so far — bus drivers like them and even rowdy students are calmer when buckled in — Gosser said that it is unknown whether or not the school will install belts in every bus in the near future.
Part of the reason is cost. WeBo schools own 47 buses, and each bus has 26 seats with a capacity of 78 individuals. The total cost of installing three belts per seat would be up to $11,000 per bus, not including labor fees. The total for all buses would exceed $517,000.
Like Western Boone, many schools including the Lebanon Community School Corp., balk at the cost of retrofitting old buses, especially given that buses are statistically safer than cars, said Lebanon transportation director Becky Nichols.
“Right now it basically comes down to cost,” she said. “A school bus is one of the safest vehicles produced. It’s safer for kids to go to school in a bus than for a parent to drive them themselves.”
A study by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that between 2001 and 2009, only one percent of student fatalities during school travel hours occurred when the students were traveling in buses. Teen drivers accounted for 58 percent of those fatalities, and adult drivers for 23 percent.
What’s more, federal and state government regulations do not require that buses come outfitted with belts.
Westfield Washington Schools outfitted six of its 82 buses with seat belts at the beginning of the 2015-16 school year. They did it, not for student safety, but because IMMI, a Westfield-based company that manufactures and tests safety systems, asked the district to run a pilot program for the belts. The company also absorbed the majority of the cost for the belts, seat backs and installation, said Westfield Washington director of business and operations Nick Verhoff.
The school had the belts installed in six of its most long-ranging buses, the ones that travel on highways and interstates to take students on field trips and athletes to away games. These buses were chosen because they travel at higher speeds and are thus more at risk for accidents, Verhoff said.
The program was greeted with mixed feelings by bus drivers and parents. Drivers worried about their liability if kids got hurt while unbuckled, and parents disliked the high cost of the belts. Now, near the end of the program’s first year, most people have come around. Student behavior has improved and drivers find that they have fewer kids standing up and switching seats while in motion.
Still, the district does not plan to install belts on any more buses.
“We don’t know that fiscally we’d be able to put belts in for just that reason,” Verhoff said. “Not that safety isn’t worth it, but by and large buses are safe.”
School transportation directors agree that federal seat belt regulations are likely to be passed in the next 10 years, but until then, districts simply do not have the money to pay for them on their own.
The one seat in the Western Boone bus has been popular with drivers and students alike, but the school does not plan now to do anything other than continue watching the belt for maintenance issues and seeing how students react, Gosser said.
“Right now we’re just trying to evaluate whether or not it works and what the other costs associated will be,” he said. “I think the belts would be useful in some situations, but if you go back to cost, that’s going to be a pretty hard sell.”