The Drawing Room Floor

A look at abandoned school bus safety products

David Wegbreit | Assistant Editor

School buses have seen massive adoptions of technology to make school buses safer every year, from unique fortified chassis frames in the 1970s to video cameras in the 1990s and, even more recently, live GPS tracking. But, for however enterprising we may be, there are inventions that never quite take hold. With the help of pupil transportation veterans and the U.S. Patent Office, School Transportation News took a look at some of these safety devices for the school bus. For whatever reason, whether they were too expensive, were too impractical or just came at the wrong time, these safety products failed to take off.

The Noise Level Indicator

In 1963, two inventors attempted to solve the problem of the noisy school bus interior with a device that would let children know when they had gotten too loud. A microphone in the seating area would measure the noise and, when riders got too rowdy, an indicator mounted near the bulkhead would light up. In making the case for their patent, the inventors wrote, “Not only does he (the school bus driver) have the lives of children as his responsibility; he must also work in an environment wherein the noise level frequently rises to the limits of human adult tolerance.” As an added bonus, the inventor’s wrote the noise level indicator would “provide a game for children within the bus.” While the noise level indicator is not in use today, industry consultant Dick Fischer, remembered when it was briefly used on Wayne Corporation buses and said it actually worked well with the elementary kids.

The Escape Ladder

“Although school buses and similar vehicles are usually provided with an escape door or openings in addition to the main door, these are sometimes jammed or blocked in an accident,” the inventors of the escape ladder for the school bus wrote in 1962. In a rollover, students would quickly unfold the ladder from beneath their seats to better access emergency exits. The two men from Lima, Ohio, about 75 miles north of Dayton, who invented the ladder assigned the device to the Superior Coach Corporation, also of Lima. Federal Motor Vehicle Standard 217, which established requirements for emergency exits, including exit windows and roof exits for buses with a capacity for 63 passengers or more, most likely addressed these concerns.

The Remote Control Seat Belt

One of the recurring questions in the debate about seat belts has been how a driver could safely get a busload of children unlatched in an emergency. More than 40 years ago, one inventor tried to solve this problem with a device that would allow the driver to unlock all the children’s seat belts with a control similar to the door lever. The driver would open a valve to release compressed air into the hydraulically-controlled belt buckles. Of course, the children would not be entirely subject to the driver control, as the seat belts would also allow students to lock and unlock their own belt buckles. The remote control seat belt was never adopted across the school bus industry, but in 1991 the Disney Company based a patent for remote-controlled seat belts for amusement park rides on this early school bus innovation.

The Roller Coaster-Style Restraint Bar

Some of these same occupant restraint concerns drove several inventors to take cues from their local amusement park. At least two patents were filed for rollercoaster-style restraint bars for school buses. “The children cannot be relied upon to engage the current safety restraints, even if they were provided,” one inventor wrote. “What is needed, therefore, is a safety restraint system for vehicles with bench seats that is easy to use and be monitored.”

The restraint bar would provide some of the same protections as lap belts and lap-shoulder belts, with a bar that would come down across students laps from the seat back in front of them. One version of the restraint bar was piloted at a Southern California school district (and even appeared at the STN Expo). However, after a year on one bus, district officials removed the system and went back to more traditional seat belts, saying the system was cumbersome and didn’t work well with larger students.

The Portable Seat Belt

Less than three years ago, two inventors thought they had a solution to the seat belt debate: portable seat belts. The idea had been around since at least 1995, but the inventors sought to improve on the design by making the product wearable. When the school bus came, a student wearing the lap-belt “belly pack” (essentially a fanny-pack) would open the pack, unfold the belt, open the buckle, pass the belt around the seat, and fasten the buckle around his or her abdomen. If the device sounds complex, the inventors assured, “the present generation of students, having been accustomed to the use of seat belts since infancy, will not find the use of the described devices difficult or cumbersome.” While the portable seat belt may never have caught on in student transportation, at least five patents have been filed for similar devices, and University of Massachusetts engineering students recently designed a version aimed at those traveling on tour buses and other vehicles that don’t have seat belts.