Final Report
School Bus Safety Belt Study

New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety
Office of Highway Traffic Safety

New Jersey Institute of Technology
Center of Transportation Studies and Research
December 1989

Executive Summary (pp. i -- ii)
Safety belts have been standard equipment in passenger automobiles for quite some time, and they have proven to be effective life-saving and injury-preventing devices. However, not all school buses are required to be equipped with seat belts. The debate on whether or not safety belts should be required on school buses is rather lively, and both sides make strong arguments in support of their points of view. Because of the convincing arguments made on both sides, the State Legislature decided to investigate the issue further, and directed the Office of Highway Traffic Safety in the Department of Law and Public Safety to conduct or cause to be conducted a study on the safety of the use of lap seat belts in all Type I and Type II school vehicles. The New Jersey Institute of Technology Center for Transportation Studies and Research, which as part of its mission is dedicated to service the research needs of state and local government, conducted this study for the Office of Highway Traffic Safety.

The U.S. Department of Transportation specifies safety standards for school buses. Thirty of the fifty Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) apply to buses, including school buses. FMVSS 222 - School Bus Seating and Crash Protection, establishes occupant protection requirements for school bus passenger seats and restraining barriers. Its purpose is to reduce occupant fatalities and injury severity from school bus occupant impacts against structures within the vehicle during crashes and sudden driving maneuvers. The standard applies to all school buses and provides passenger protection through the "compartmentalization" of the vehicle. This standard also specifies the required deflection criteria, head and knee impact requirements, and establishes criteria for cushioning sufficiently the head and leg impact zones. The seat back height is required to be 20 inches above the Seating Reference Point (SRP). The maximum spacing between the rear surface of the front seat and the SRP of the immediate back seat is specified to be 24 inches.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has declared school buses to be "the safest form of surface transportation". This statement is correct and can be substantiated by the national fatality and fatality rate figures. School buses, having a fatality rate of only 0.5 per million vehicle miles traveled, are about four times as safe as passenger cars that have an overall rate of 1.9 fatalities per million vehicle miles, and are almost 100 times safer than motorcycles. If a similar comparison were to be made for the State of New Jersey, one would have to say that school buses are infinitely more safe than automobiles, since there has been no fatality of a school bus passenger over the fast decade in this State. Obviously, the safety record of school buses is unquestionably very strong. However, this should not imply that safety improvements are not possible, since accidents involving school buses do happen, and children continue to get killed and injured, although in relatively small numbers.

The time and funds allocated to this study did not permit the conduct of original and capital intensive research such as crash testing, or lengthy comparative accident studies. By necessity, secondary sources were primarily used. Final recommendations are made on the basis of investigations that covered four main bodies of knowledge or information sources. These sources were bus and sled crash tests that were conducted for U.S. safety agencies and manufacturers and the Canadian Government, systematic school bus accident investigations and available statistics on school bus accidents, operating experiences of school districts that have their buses equipped with seat belts, and finally, professional and interest group views that were found in the literature or were solicited by the study team.

Conclusions and Recommendations (pp. 88 - 90) School buses are without any doubt the safest mode of transportation. Furthermore, a greater proportion of school bus pupil fatalities occurs outside rather than inside the vehicle. However accidents do happen and pupils continue to get injured or killed in the interior of the bus. Requiring the installation of seats belts in all school buses will improve the vehicle's overall safety performance, as it was calculated in detail in the previous chapter. The benefits from the installation of seat belts will not be very significant, because the fatality and injury base that seat belts can affect is very small. In addition, the estimation of factors that were used in the derivation of seat belt effectiveness was rather conservative. An argument can even be made that justifies seat belts in terms of their cost effectiveness. Seat belts will cost the taxpayers of this State about $1 million per year. In return, approximately 0.074 fatalities, 5 incapacitating injuries, and 21 nonincapacitating injuries will be prevented per year. Without placing a dollar value on the life of a child, or the cost of medical care until recovery (or for life in some instances), and given the conservative nature of the estimates, the money appears to be well spent. It has been estimated that many environmental and occupational safety and health regulations cost between $7 million and $232 million per life saved. Seat belts on school buses will be at or below the lower end of this range.

Recommendations on Seat Belts Since seat belts were found to be effective, it is recommended that both Type I and Type II school buses should be required to be equipped with seat belts in the State of New Jersey.

It is obvious that seat belts can be effective only when they are used. Therefore, it is further recommended that seat belt use for all occupants (students, monitors, drivers, teachers, parents) is also mandated in all buses that are equipped with seat belts. Simply installing seat belts without mandating their use will be a waste or resources.

Because of technical problems, the retrofitting of existing school buses with seat belts in undesirable. Seat belts should be introduced into the State's school bus fleet gradually as the fleet is renewed. It is recommended that seat belts should be required on Type I school buses purchased after the effective date of the Bill that will establish that requirement. The requirement of seat belt use on Type II vehicles and the seat-belt equipped vehicles already in service should be effective immediately.

The seat belts required should be of the lap belt type. Although this type of belt may provide less protection than some alternative restraints, the technical and operational problems with these alternatives more than cancel out their additional benefits.

Since no stands (standards) exit that specify how seat belts should be installed in Type I vehicles, the specifications for anchoring them should be the same as those followed by the manufacturers when installing them in Type II buses. The National Coalition for Seat Belts on School Buses recommendations on belt color coding, matching buckles, etc. that were quoted on page 59 should also be followed in order to make the use of seat belts easier and minimize their misues.

Seat belts are safety devices and their use should be treated with the seriousness they deserve. Their use should be strictly enforced, just like the use of protective equipment in sports events that students participate.

Parents, principals, teachers, transportation coordinators, mechanics, and drivers have to cooperate if seat belts are to be effective. Parents should be informed and asked to remind their children to "buckle up" when they leave home in the morning. Principals should establish seat belt programs ranging from evacuation drills to insure that students can exist the bus in an orderly manner during an emergency, to policies on penalities to students that refuse to use their belts. Teachers can contribute by urging their classes before they are dismissed after the last period that they should "buckle-up" when they get on the bus. Transportation coordinators should educate their drivers and mechanics on the benefits of seat belt use. Mechanics should pay as much attention on seat belts as they pay on other safety features of the bus such as its brakes or mirrors. Drivers should be reminding their students to "buckle-up" often.

Recommendations on School Bus Safety

The installation of use of seat belts, will obviously not eliminate fatalities and injuries completely, although a small step will be taken in the right direction. The progress of research on rearward facing seats should be followed closely. The concept has the potential of improving further the safety of school buses, and when conclusive results are available supporting its use, New Jersey should adopt it also. New Jersey has provided in the past a leadership role in highway safety (e.g., the Jersey barrier). It can do the same again by conducting evaluation experiments with buses equipped with rearward facing seats, similar to those conducted in Canada. The cost will be relatively small, but the potential benefits could be very substantial. They may provide the next substantial step towards improving school bus safety, and generate benefits similar to those achieved by the 1977 standards.

The fatalities and injuries occurring outside the bus are tragic and unjustifiable, and measures should be taken to reduce them. Monitors will be effective, but they are very costly. Mechanical gates, electronic sensors, video monitors, STOP arms, and better driver training are all alternatives for monitors but much less effective. This problem deserves more attention and study than seat belts. When the seat belt issue is settled, both proponents and opponents of seat belts should concentrate their efforts in improving safety on the outside of school buses. The authors of this report found that all groups are genuinely interested and concerned with school bus safety, no matter what their stand on seat belts was. When these groups of energetic individuals join their forces, the only possible outcome can be better protection for our children which are our society's most precious resource.