For years, our roadways in California have been dotted with signs reminding drivers to “Click It or Ticket”. For much longer, highway safety agencies and advocacy groups have been pushing seat belt use as one of the most effective ways to prevent injury and death in auto accidents. On a national level, seat belts have been required equipment in passenger cars since 1968.
So it is a bit alarming that there is one place where seat belts aren’t legally required on a national level: school buses. Every day, thousands of children board a school bus to get to school and—despite our best attempts to teach them to always use a seat belt—on this daily form of transportation there are no safety belts in sight. Instead, for decades, school bus safety has been built around a concept known as “compartmentalization” to keep our kids safe—in other words, the use of high, padded seat backs that keep kids “compartmentalized” in the event of crash. According to NHTSA, combined with the size and weight of school buses, “compartmentalization” has proven effective at protecting school bus passengers.
But certainly there would be no harm in also installing seat belts? Particularly given how they have been heralded as such an effective safety device in car accidents? Thankfully, in California, students who ride school buses have the benefit of both compartmentalization and seat belts. According to California’s Vehicle Code, school buses that carry more than 16 passengers and manufactured after 2005 and school buses that carry fewer than 16 passengers and manufactured after 2004 are required to have passenger restraint systems.
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