The Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group tasked with examining if seatbelts should be required for school buses following a fatal crash in August, said it will release its findings the week of Jan. 8.
That comment was made on Dec. 1 during what was likely the last of six meetings, during which some of the 15 members made their objections to lap/shoulder belts known.
Gov. Mike DeWine created the School Bus Safety Working Group following the death of an 11-year-old student earlier this year after another vehicle collided with his Northwestern Local School District school bus, which did not have seatbelts. The bus rolled over and the child was ejected. Twenty-three other students were injured.
Community reaction is mixed. Some advocate for seatbelt use. Others cite concerns of students struggling to get out of their seats in the event of a fire. So far, bus driver objections and costs indicate a reluctance among Ohio student transporters to using seatbelts in school buses.
During the Dec. 1 meeting, working group member Davida Russell, a school bus driver for South Euclid-Lyndhurst School District in the east Cleveland area, reported the results of a survey she conducted of school bus drivers and aides across Ohio during in-person and Zoom meetings. The survey claims that 81 percent of the over 1,160 respondents don’t want seatbelts while 12 percent do. The survey also states that those opposed said they think alternative safety measures should be used instead, such as installing video cameras, hiring more aides and offering more defensive driving training.
Working group members represent public safety, transportation, mechanics and education sectors. School bus seatbelts are one of several safety topics being examined, including alternative transportation and associated risks, critical incident protocol, school bus design standards, maintenance and inspections, and safety technology.
The report did not disclose how many, if any, of the respondents have first-hand experience with school bus seatbelts.
There are three Ohio school districts — Avon Lake, Hudson and Beachwood — that have experience with lap/shoulder seatbelts in school buses. One of those districts presented its experience to the working group on Oct. 12. It set a dark contrast with the experiences of other districts that have had success with implementing the safety restraint systems.
Joelle Magyar, Avon Lake’s superintendent, shared challenges she said the district faced after purchasing two, 72-passenger Blue Bird buses with lap/shoulder seatbelts in 2019.
Magyar, who was not the superintendent when the program began, told the group that students who had difficulty buckling up required assistance from school bus drivers, who had to stop the vehicles, remove the keys from the ignition, leave their seats, and help the students buckle. These steps resulted in longer route times, she added.
Working group member Melody Coniglio, the northeast region director for the Ohio Association of Pupil Transportation and West Geauga Schools transportation director, responded that bus drivers getting out of their seats to help students buckle up creates an unsafe situation and may require monitors on the buses.
High school students being transported to sporting events could not fit in the shoulder straps and had to sit with their knees crouched, Magyar added.
Some students shoved the buckles inside of the seat bottom, she noted. Older or larger students found them uncomfortable. Backpacks would get stuck in the seatbelts, even though students should remove their bags and place them on the floor when seated. In one instance, Magyar said the bus driver had to rip the backpack strap to get the student unattached from the seatbelt.
Parents of kindergarten students reported rubbing rashes on their children’s necks due to the shoulder strap hitting too high. Magyar said for some students the learning curve was relatively easy, but the ease of using seatbelts was affected by bringing a backpack or instrument.
Given the choice to drive the bus with or without seatbelts, she shared that bus drivers always chose the bus without seatbelts because of their experience with them.
Although students were trained on bus evacuations with seatbelts, some — including younger students and those with special needs — still had challenges, Magyar relayed.
As a result, Avon Park currently has no plans to purchase buses with seatbelts unless the state mandates otherwise, Magyar said. Liability concerns were a significant issue with bus drivers.
“If they can’t get them out of the seatbelts or if they’re not wearing a seatbelt and something happens, the mindset is if something ever happens to a kid because I can’t get them out of the seatbelt, then I’m liable,” she said.
Magyar explained that her district recommends not having seatbelts on buses but rather instituting other safety procedures such as stop-arm cameras, reinstating front license plates on vehicles and instituting tougher penalties and fines for school bus violations. But after the meeting, Magyar told School Transportation News there was no training involved during the pilot project implementation.
“I am not sure what kind of training we would have needed to do. The seatbelts are like the ones in a car, but they are stiffer and harder to put on,” she said.
A usage policy was also not established since the seatbelts were not mandatory, she said.
“We are a district of 11 square miles with no speed limit over 35 mph,” Magyar noted. “Perhaps it makes sense to put seatbelts on buses in districts where they are traveling on roads with higher speed limits and longer distances.”
As for liability concerns, Magyar noted that “school employees working in their professional capacity and acting in good faith, have federal immunity to liability. We need to do a better job at the district level to remind our employees of this,” she continued. “Boards of Education can be held liable as well as the superintendent and treasurer. Other employees of the district are covered under immunity laws from being held personally responsible.”
No discussion was had about the liability school districts might face if seatbelts are available for school buses but are not implemented, and a fatality occurs during a crash. In September, Kristin Poland, deputy director of the National Transportation Safety Board Office of Highway Safety, told the working group that lap/shoulder seatbelts complete school bus seat compartmentalization. When not belted during a side-impact or rollover crash, she noted that NTSB investigations as well as crash tests show students are thrown about the bus, resulting in further injury or death.
During that Sept. 25 meeting, Coniglio expressed concern to Poland that belted students might be further injured or worse when seated in a crash impact zone. Poland explained that NTSB investigations such as one following a crash in Anaheim, California show that seatbelts allow students to ride away from the impact zone due to the integration and engineering of the belt system and the bus seat.
Related: NTSB’s Hart Provides Insights from School Bus Crash Investigations
Related: Study Outlines School Bus Seatbelt Policy Role in Improving Student Behavior
In terms of influencing student conduct, Magyar said while the seatbelts kept students out of the aisles, drivers reported some students would pull the seatbelt out of the seat and hit each other with the seatbelt part that goes across their chest.
However, the lap/shoulder seatbelts currently on the market fully retract into the seat when not in use and are difficult if not impossible to use as weapons.
Rudy Breglia, founder of the School Bus Seat Belt Safety Alliance, brought an IMMI school bus seat with SafeGuard lap/shoulder seatbelts to one of the meetings for working group members to look at and try out. He said only two members took him up on the offer. IMMI also offered to present to the group but was told the agenda was already full.
Additional Perspectives
While representatives of Beachwood and Hudson City Schools did not speak during the meeting — and neither responded to requests from STN for comment on the current affairs of their seatbelt programs — on Nov. 16 the working group heard from a panel of school bus drivers, which included the different perspective of Catherine Cooper from Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation in Indiana. That district was the only one the working group heard from that equips all its school buses with lap/shoulder seatbelts and requires students to use them. She added that all students are trained from the time they enter school to wear their seatbelts.
“Back to back, seat to seat, feet on the floor, out of the aisle is our saying,” she said.
Cooper noted that the belts retract fully into the seat when not in use. She also addressed concerns voiced by some working group members that the shoulder belt might choke students by pointing out that the three-point SafeGuard seatbelts Bartholomew uses include a height adjuster, so the belt fits properly across each student’s shoulder and chest.
Meanwhile, one of the working group members asked the driver panel for suggestions to address the school bus driver shortage, aside from improved pay and benefits. School bus driver and onboard instructor Jimmie Dawson of Peterman Bus, the contractor for Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools northeast of Cleveland, said student behavior is the biggest detractor to retaining drivers and identifying new candidates. Some studies show fewer behavioral problems in buses equipped with seatbelts. The NHTSA-sponsored ‘Education on Proper Use of Seat Belts on School Buses’ indicates seatbelt use is associated with improved student behavior and reduced bus driver distraction, which may help mitigate the national bus driver shortage.
Breglia started the School Bus Seat Safety Alliance after a 2016 school bus crash in Chattanooga, Tennessee that killed six children. He said he believes with “will and leadership,” challenges experienced by seatbelt usage could be easily mitigated.
“I’m sure that some preparation, communications, training and other adjustments need to be made whenever any new restrictive safety improvements are made in school bus transportation but represent minor changes relative to the improvements in student safety and behavior,” he added. “Any new restrictive safety equipment will need communications on the how and why of seatbelt use for everyone concerned including parents as well as sufficient adjustment time for the bus drivers and students on clear uncomplicated policies regarding rules for use.”
Breglia said a usage policy should recommend that seatbelts be used by all students if available. Students who refuse to buckle up should not allowed to use the bus for transportation and need to be driven by their parents, he suggested.
Legislating the Issue
The issue is gaining traction among lawmakers.
Breglia noted the Democrat-led School Bus Safety Act that was recently re-introduced by Sens. Sharrod Brown of Ohio and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. In September, Breglia also testified before the Ohio Transportation Committee on the bipartisan House Bill 279 sponsored by State Rep. Bernie Willis, to require lap/shoulder seatbelts on all school buses within five years of the bill’s effective date. Neither legislation has yet to move forward at this report.
While nine states already require seatbelts, adoption has extended across the county in places like Indiana, where the decision to implement the safety restraints are left to individual school corporations. School bus manufacturer representatives for IC Bus, Blue Bird and Thomas Built Buses spoke at the Oct. 30 working group meeting and indicated there is an uptick in requests from school districts for seatbelts on new school buses. At the same time, much attention has been diverted to outside the school bus, explained Ricky Stanley, the state specifications coordinator for Thomas.
“When we’ve looked at fatalities over the years, we’ve always focused on the inside and lap and shoulder belts or just belts period,” he shared. “The focus has now shifted to where most of the accidents are outside the realm of the bus. Increasing the visibility in that area to all of those parties is probably the biggest key component that we need to be aware of.”
A Budgetary Concern?
Then there is the issue of cost. West Geauga’s Coniglio pointed out during an Oct. 12 meeting that ordering new school buses with three-point seatbelts can cost up to $10,000 more per vehicle, and retrofitting existing buses is even more expensive because it entails taking out the seats and putting new ones in as they are braced differently.
The idea of installing seatbelts in school buses has been long supported by multiple safety and health organizations dating back at least to 1998, when the National PTA adopted a resolution supporting legislation or regulation requiring any new bus purchased transporting school children to be equipped with seatbelts. The Ohio PTA also champions school bus seatbelts.
Nine states — using different criteria — require seatbelts in their school buses, noted the Ohio PTA, which last year supported their use, citing NTSB’s 1999 finding that compartmentalization — the thickly padded seat backs and close spacing between seats designed to create a protective envelope for students — was incomplete as it did not account for school bus rollovers or side crashes.
The NTSB has since called for three-point, lap-and-shoulder restraints in all newly purchased large school buses. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recommends lap-shoulder seatbelts in “every school bus for every child” but only requires the systems in school buses with gross vehicle weight ratings of less than 10,000 pounds.
NHTSA also notes less than 1 percent of traffic fatalities involve school buses, adding its opinion that children are more at risk at school bus stops. A previous statement by NHTSA on school bus seatbelts is that implementing them nationwide could result in one fewer onboard fatality per year.
Related: Second Ohio School Bus Working Group Focuses on Crash Risk Factors, Lap/Shoulder Seatbelts
Related: Ohio School Bus Fatality Prompts Latest Legislation Pushing Seatbelt Requirement
Related: NAPT Asks Feds for Clarification on Benefits of School Bus Lap/Shoulder Seatbelts
Ohio PTA, meanwhile, noted the additional cost of having lap-shoulder seatbelts in new school buses is estimated at $5 per student per year over the lifetime of the bus, representing approximately 0.5 percent of the total cost of transporting a student for a year.
Ohio school districts also face an increased risk of unlimited compensatory damage awards for student fatalities and injuries from incidents during transport on school buses without lap-shoulder seatbelts, the state’s PTA pointed out.
Still, funding fears continue. Sheriff George T. Maier of Stark County, Ohio, who also represents the Buckeye State Sheriffs Association, recently told the working group that the cost of adding seatbelts can’t get lost in the debate over safety.
“I think everybody’s fearful of what it will cost and the ongoing cost as it relates to staffing to help children get in and out of those seats,” he continued. “You would never get me up here to say I’m against safety belts. But I think we also have to take that into consideration as it relates to what we do going forward.”
Ryan Gray contributed to this report.
