so after the wreck yesterday, folks are talking a lot about seatbelts on buses. i have always wondered why they dont have them on there, yet if you get pulled over and your child isnt buckled in then your ticket is 2-3 times as high as it is for an adult not wearing a seatbelt.

i listened to their arguements this morning about the safety and why they feel they arent needed .... but still, that seems like a big place to have children being thrown around inside there without protection - you cant tell me that the seats are THAT soft that they wouldnt be hurt. i rode the bus when i was young, and i dont remember them being anything that would 'protect' a child.

PLUS, is there a limit as to how many kids they can put on a bus ????? THERE WERE 53 kids on that bus 53 !!!!! thats a lot of children in such a tiny area... wonder how big they really are in there ?? like, how many seats ??

im just sayin, why the hell dont they figure out a way to put seatbelts on the bus ??? true enough, there were no kids killed yesterday THANK GOD ! but there are 3 in critical condition.. several broken bones, and im sure several children were scared to death

i think its worth the money to put them in there.. so far i think there are only 4 states they said that have the seatbelts on buses.

having school age children for 20 yrs ... i have thought about this for yrs and yrs

watching kids jump and move freely round passing buses ... 1/2 hanging out of windows and the such

seems their safty would be important to SOMEONE ...

I have asked this question over and over again and I keep getting the whole safety thing. My family in viginia work on the buses for the school district and they say they check those buses over and over again and they are safe. My argument is yeah as long as there is not an accident and it doesn't go flying through the air like the one yesterday. I think it all comes down to cost as usual.

Mach said:

it makes me freak out every time the kids go on a field trip im always worried something will go wrong....

i just cant see how as the school system is 'designed' to protect and care for our children, how the hell do they not see this as a danger ?????

today, they said it wasnt going to work because children of all different sizes take the bus - from age 3 all the way up to the big football kids in high school, theres no seatbelt that would work for all of them funny, cuz, if i take a 3 year old in my car, i have them wear a seatbelt... if i then pick up a highschool kid, they put on a seatbelt too. seems to work out just fine in MY car, why cant it work in theirs ????

butterfli25 said:

thats what im sayin.... COST !!!!

how much is a child's life worth ????

the bus that was in that wreck yesterday was safety checked 2 weeks prior to the accident, that didnt help those kids yesterday... nor is it helping the ones that are still in the hospital.

LIBERTY, Mo. May 10, 2005 — A school bus slammed into two vehicles as it approached an intersection Monday morning, killing two people in the cars and injuring 23 elementary students.

Investigators said they don't know why the bus suddenly veered into the cars, which were waiting for a stoplight to change in this community about 15 miles north of Kansas City.

Two children were taken to hospitals with life-threatening injuries. Some of the children suffered head injuries, cuts, scrapes, broken bones and neck injuries, said Laura Fitzmaurice, head of the emergency department at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. Many were bleeding and crying for their parents.




"One little boy had his teeth knocked out and he asked me if he was going to be deformed," said a shaken Vickie Whattoff, one of about 20 workers from a nearby grocery store who responded. "We saw that it was a bus and ran over and started helping kids out."

The cars were nearly demolished. The victims were identified as David Gleason, 53, of Kansas City, and David Sandweiss, 49, of Liberty, police said. They were the only people in the vehicles.

Police said 23 students were taken to three area hospitals with injuries and the others were taken to the school or released to their parents.

"It's a worst nightmare," he said. "This is a tragedy for this community."

The bus was taking 53 kindergartners through fifth-graders to Ridgeview Elementary School when the crash happened about 8:30 a.m. The students ranged in age from 6 to 11.

The bus driver, whose name was not released, was being treated at a hospital Monday. Taveau said the driver was a seven-year veteran driver who had "an impeccable record."

Immediately after the crash, dozens of workers at nearby businesses rushed to the scene to help the children off the bus.

"We were standing outside on a break when we heard a loud boom and saw a big cloud of dust," said Whattoff.

Many of the workers sat with the children, she said, comforting them while waiting for rescue crews to show up.

I know, I worry about field trips too. My baby takes the bus everyday and I have to keep it out of my mind that the driver has this big curve and a large hill to negotiate every day. I have to be confident in the professionalism of the driver, the safety of the bus and the conduct of the riders.

Damn now I am worried

butterfli25 said:

dont worry sweetie - GO MAKE THEM FIX IT !!!!!

surely as parents there is SOMETHING we can do

what does it take to start a petition ???

i mean, they are OUR CHILDREN and they are not negotiable !!!!!

i would go up against the school system on this one in a heartbeat in fact, i need a new project

npp v. the school board




that's a helluva project girl.

you may want to start with the state legislature and your congressperson.

butterfli25 said:

well, i just started it

i called the school board.. they are calling me right back, the woman that i talked to seemed very interested in helping me since, its not the school board persay, its the bus system

but, i bet when im done... kansas will become a state that has seatbelts put on their fucking buses

wish me luck girl


NPP vs THE SCHOOL BOARD

im lookin forward to it

now is the time to get some of the state level politicians involved, while it is a hot button issue.

butterfli25 said:

they called back, and GUESS WHAT ?????


THEY WANT PARENTS TO DO THIS MAYBE ITS BECAUSE THEY NEED THE HELP TO GET IT DONE, I DONT KNOW... BUT, THEY ARE HAVING ME SPEAK WITH THE MAN IN CHARGE OF TRANSPORTATION IN OUR DISTRICT FIRST, AND THEN I WILL MOVE ON FROM THERE.. seems to me that they knew this was comming, they werent surprised to hear from parents today about this at all...

hopefully that means things will go well

i'll keep you informed

COOOOOLLLLL!!!!!11

Recent school bus accidents revive calls for seat belts By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
Tue May 10,



A bus carrying 53 students hit two cars stopped at a red light in Liberty, Mo., on Monday morning, killing two adults in the cars and sending 23 students to the hospital. (Related story: Two killed in bus accident)



Several students suffered life-threatening injuries and were taken by helicopter to local emergency rooms. "We have head injuries, broken bones (and) a lot of fractures," said Jennifer Benz, spokeswoman at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., where nine students were being treated.

The cause of the accident, the latest in a series of fatal crashes involving a school buses, is under investigation. But the accidents have renewed calls to put seat belts on the nation's 585,000 school buses.

School buses are the safest way to travel to school. Nonetheless, an average of 20 students are killed every year - five while riding the bus and 15 run over by buses while getting on or off them. And the image of students killed or injured in bus accidents can make parents shudder. In recent weeks:

• Two students were killed April 28 in Arlington, Va., when a school bus collided with a garbage truck.

• A school bus equipped with seat belts in New York City flipped April 26. The 44 sixth-graders on board suffered minor injuries.

• A 16-year-old high school sophomore died March 29 in Ripley, Okla., when a bus struck a flatbed truck. The driver of the truck also died. The bus driver faces charges of negligent homicide.

"School buses are old-fashioned, out-dated and don't give children the benefit of current safety techniques," says Alan Ross, president of the National Coalition for School Bus Safety. He says school buses should have seat belts and be redesigned so they are not so top-heavy and prone to rolling over.

New York, New Jersey and Florida require new buses to have seat belts, but only New Jersey and Florida require students to use them, says Michael Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, which represents school transportation directors and the school bus industry.

Seat belts would save about one life a year, Martin says. Installing seatbelts similar to those in cars would add about $4,000 to the $80,000-$95,000 cost of a new 66-seat bus, he says.

School bus travel is the safest way to get to school when measured by miles traveled or number of trips, according to a 181-page report called The Relative Risks of School Travel, produced by the Transportation Research Board, an independent panel that advises Congress. Most dangerous: teens driving to school - 100 times more deadly than riding a school bus, when measured by miles traveled.

"The image of a school bus wreck or a plane crash grabs you. People don't identify as closely with the fact that 43,000 people die every year in car crashes," says Douglas Robertson, director of the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina.

The 8:30 a.m. bus crash in Liberty, Mo., sent panicked parents to the scene. Motorists and workers in nearby stores rushed to help the injured children. The bus was carrying kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students to school in Liberty, a town of 28,000 just northeast of Kansas City. "It's a worst nightmare," said Liberty School Superintendent Scott Taveau.

yeah that is the argument I get from my family in virginia, but to the parents of those dead children that argument is irrelevant.

seatbelts on buses would be an EXCELLENT start. i used to take buses in elementary & junior high school, and a really bad part of the problem is that they force three students onto each seat, no matter what. for little kids, that works okay, but with older kids the third one ends up hanging off the seat and grabbing onto something for dear life.

mach thanks girl for posting that

heres what i know so far.. the man in charge of transportation for our district did call me back, and he is sending me some facts/figures/articles and whatnot to my email address. he said that i would have to start in congress somewhere... which although he was very polite and helpful, he thinks that i will back down if thats the route i have to go (this poor guy doesnt know me very well ) .... little things like this dont stop me


i've always been interested in the law world.. and i would LOVE nothing more than to direct my energy to something so simple, yet so incredibly important as putting seatbelts on school buses.

WATCH OUT, HERE I COME !!!!!

evenstar3 said:

that is something that i plan to address as well

there should be NO reason for that child to be hanging off the seat like that... today on good morning america i believe it was, they had a man in a bus measuring seats. from what he said, allowing 20 inches for each student, there is NOT enough room for all those kids they try to pack in there.

i have always understood it to be an issue of safety in another respect

imagine this girls... the schoolbus rolls over and lands on it's roof. your five year old little mite is now hanging upside down dangling six feet in the air (i can't remember how high the roof was but it was at least that high)

there is only one adult on board - the bus driver. if there is a further emergency like fire there would not be time to reach all children to get them free. and your little ones wouldn't be strong enough to hold the body weight of each other back in order to unfasten the seatbelt.

think about it - we don't have seatbelts on city transit buses or subways either.

yes it might save a life in one situation but it might take a life in another.

There are no seat belts on yellow school buses or public buses

emm said:

see, thats just what my friend was just talking to me about.. what if a bus caught fire ?? or ended up in water upside down ?????

i guess there are reasons for everything, but damn, why do they make us belt them in then ????

maybe there is some type of emergency switch that can release all buckles at once ????

nakedpianoplayer said:

because the benefits outweigh the risks in a smaller vehicle


but then you would have this mass of bodies falling from the air at once - i dunno it's a difficult one

nakedpianoplayer said:

A childs life doesn't seam to be worth anything to the powers that be, the only lives that seam to be continually valued are those that are already rich.


Anyways some towns in mass had belts on the bus, my kids told me everyone just pushed them into the seat and sat on them, no one wore them.

My only problem with having them would be that the ones I have seen on buses are so large and dificult a buckle, would a child be able to undo it and get out after a crash?

In my town the Headstart bus and all the so-called 'short busses' all have seatbelts. The regular school busses do not. I think they should be required.

there are so many ways of looking at this situation... first and foremost should be the safety of the kids, we all agree on that

i have an idea

now, i just need to see if i can make this happen

i'll get back to you guys, keep posting your thoughts on here though, i enjoy the different views on the topic