A citizen from Toledo, Ohio is pushing a bill before Congress that would require seat belts on school buses that travel from state to state. John Betts’ bus safety bill is his response to a bus accident in 2008 that killed five teens on a traveling baseball team, including his son.

            Such incidents are not isolated. A fatal collision of a garbage truck and a school bus with no seat belts in Arlington, Virginia killed a nine-year-old girl and injured other children in 2005.

            Seat belts have long been identified as an effective way to prevent death and serious injury during car accidents. California has mandated the use of seat belts in all standard-sized automobiles since 1986. By creating a federal seat belt requirement for interstate buses, Betts’ bill would improve the vehicles that transport children through a mechanism that is in no way novel or radical. This is a good step in the right direction. If Betts’ bill passes, the state should ultimately pick up where federal law leaves off and mandate seat belts on all school buses.

For years, the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended improved restraint systems on buses. “It’s not like we are asking the industry to come up with technology that hasn’t been invented,” said Jacqueline Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, in a Feb. 28 Boston Times article.

            Alan Ross, a spokesman for the National Coalition for School Bus Safety, said requiring seat belts is common sense. “We know from our car experience that these restraints are life-saving,” he said.

Betts’ bus-safety bill would also strengthen bus roofs and improve bus designs to prevent passengers from being thrown out the windows during collisions, another good idea that could prevent deaths.

But school transportation officials who move thousands of students every day in buses without seat belts defend their safety record and cite the latest national research to support their position. Riding a bus to school is safer than arriving on foot, by bicycle or in a parent’s car, a 2002 study by the Transportation Research Board found.

School buses instead make use of a restraint system called compartmentalization, which stands for a safety envelope or “compartment” around passengers in school buses. The idea is that if a crash occurs, the passenger may be thrown around, but the seat compartment absorbs the crash force and protects the passenger. The federal government has concluded from available research that compartmentalization is a better safety measure than seat belts on school buses that weigh over 10,000 pounds. However, the average of 23 bus accident deaths per year in the last decade shows that compartmentalization does not work 100 percent of the time; restraint systems are an important back-up measure.

Installing seat belts does cost money: The estimated cost for each new school bus is $1,500 to $2,000. The additional cost of retrofitting all existing school buses in the U.S with seat belts would range from $37,500,000 to $60,000,000, according to the School Transportation News Web site (stnonline.com). But Congress should realize that making these changes would save lives.

Other states have recognized the importance of seat belts. In memory of two Beaumont soccer players that were killed in a rollover accident last spring, the Texas Senate passed a bill on May 17, 2007 to require lap-shoulder seat belts on all new school buses.

Seat belts are unquestionably effective and cost relatively little. Congress should pass the bus safety bill to protect one of the nation’s most important resources — its children.