Should school/charter busses have seatbelts

[Iamanerd]

I used to ride 10 km all the time at the age of 9.

My school, which I also rode to every day, was only about 5 km away though. I walked to school every day from age 5 to age 8 or so, always with a friend or two, and that school was only about 2 km away, then I started riding my bike.

I also lived in one of the safest cities in the US, though, San Jose. I wouldn't want a kid to do this in South Chicago.

Same here back in middle school up until HS I rode my bike to school as long as it wasn't snowing, it was 5 miles there and another 5 back. Personally I liked it because I left 15 minutes earlier from school and got home 20 minutes before I would on the bus But I took the bus on rainy days or days where it decided to dump a foot of snow on us. But HS was out of the question as I would have needed to ride on the highway and a through a shitty city that was 15 miles away.

[belfpala]

What does this "kids should just bike or walk or get driven by their parents" stuff have anything to do with buses having/not having seat belts?

A typical US school bus holds about 75 kids. My school had probably 20 buses.

Rather have them in the buses without seatbelts, or see 1500 kids on bikes trying to make it to school every day? Or 1500 parents trying to drive them to school (woah, traffic).

[Rucati]

This can't be serious. No, school buses don't need seatbelts. Kids wouldn't wear them anyway, I know I certainly wouldn't have. There's no reason to require it, don't be ridiculous. I know we like to make everything super extra safe, but this won't help anything regardless.

[errosync]

This argument is terrible. People need to stop using it.

No, your argument was terrible because it assumes that roll overs with cars aren't inherently more dangerous than a bus rolling over, which is the most illogical fucking thing I've heard all week. It would be better for a bus to roll over because there is massive clearance room between the patrons and the ceiling, the shape is designed to funnel everything down to a single point, and it would require a fairly herculean effort to get that huge son-of-a-bitch to tip in the first place. Buses are heavier, larger, longer and sturdier (because they legally have to be) than the average passenger vehicle. They're also designed so that, if side collisions do occur, the offender is more likely to get pushed under the bus than to tip it (thanks to modern crumple zones and the air-space under neath the main seating area).

It doesn't matter how you personally view the facts because they're facts; you thinking it's all some big ploy to save a couple bucks at the expense of lives doesn't change that, on average, more people cause, are victim to and die from car crashes than bus crashes even happen. The ones you hear about on the new are over-sensationalized horror stories that aren't anywhere close to representative to what actually happens. If you really want to make a difference, go learn how to be a damn mechanical engineer, get a job with Collins or Blue Bird and make an even safer design, or divine a way to get the average driver to be safer around other drivers; don't force people like me who aren't paranoid of anomalies to pay because you think school buses need racing harnesses.

Two different vehicles that require 2 sets of safety.

This is the key: apples to fucking oranges. That's also not even detailing that a school bus driver (or any public transit driver) needs a special license and has massive legal/social responsibility meaning that the chance you're going to get a driver that's even thinking of putting the passengers in danger is a percent of a percent. We don't need three point harnesses, what we need is better driving education for the general public, parents who have no damn business being parents and deciding what stays/goes because of their paranoia and inability to take responsibility themselves and the general public to be less reactionary when things like crashes with buses where people die happen. People die every day, but you don't see most folks giving two shits about it unless it's on the news and over-sensationalized. Instead of buying into media-hyped tripe, take a deep breath and use some common sense.