DEBATE * USA - Seat belts on school buses
Toledo,OH,USA -The Toledo Blade -Dec 16, 2006: -- Why only a handful of states and school districts require some degree of safety belt protection in school buses is increasingly difficult to understand with the release of new national statistics on school bus-related accidents... Surely even minimal protective measures for the 23.5 million children who ride school buses nationwide cannot be so exceedingly cost-prohibitive as to dismiss the notion outright... Still, school-bus accidents send about 17,000 kids to emergency rooms each year, a number that has more than doubled from previous estimates. While crashes account for 42 percent of school bus injuries, nearly a quarter of them happen simply when students are boarding or leaving school buses... According to Ohio researchers at the Columbus Children's Hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy, the injuries range from cuts and sprains to broken bones. Most are not life-threatening and, even though statistics are higher than previously reported, they represent a fraction of the overall school bus-riding population... Five states - California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, and New York - now require safety belts for school buses... If lawmakers can see the need to require expensive child seats and booster seats to securely harness young children in cars, why are buses that primarily transport millions of children nationwide largely exempt from such safeguards? The new statistics on avoidable school bus injuries should make this matter a public priority...
* New York - A cheap, effective way to curb injuries on school buses
Westchester,NY,USA -The Journal News.com -Dec 17, 2006: -- Stand with parents long enough at any school bus stop and the subject inevitably comes up: Why don't schools make children wear seat belts on the bus?... In New York state, the law requires school buses to have lap seat belts, but leaves it up to the individual school district to decide whether to mandate their use. Most districts throughout the state, including those in the Lower Hudson Valley, have opted not to require their students to wear seat belts. Their argument has always been that school buses, with padded high-backed seats that can cushion children in the even of a collision, are the safest vehicles around, far safer than the family car... State law mandates all front-seat passengers to wear seat belts, and it requires children under the age of 16 to wear them even in the back seat. Children under the age of 4 must ride in child safety seats and, since March 2005, those up to the age of 7 must ride in booster seats. The penalty for a seat-belt or car-seat violation is a fine of up $50... This is one safety measure that wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime. Lap seat belts already exist on any bus manufactured since 1987. All the state has to do is require students to buckle them...
posted by Unknown @ 9:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home