Improving Child Transportation Safety

The National Transportation Safety Board
Safety Board Initiatives

Presented at the Child Transportation Safety Conference
Arlington, Virginia, May 31 - June 2, 1995

The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency of the federal government, is charged with determining the probable causes of all civil aviation accidents and significant accidents in the other modes of transportation, and issuing safety recommendations to prevent future accidents. In its 28-year history, the Board has investigated more than 100,000 aviation accidents and thousands more in the surface modes.

Although it has no regulatory or enforcement powers, the NTSB's reputation for impartiality and thoroughness has resulted in fully 82 percent of its almost 10,000 recommendations being adopted by those in the position to implement transportation safety enhancements.

Over the years, some Board recommendations have been aimed at improving the safety of transportation for the nation's children. Among improvements brought about, at least in part, by NTSB recommendations are improved construction standards of school buses and mandatory child safety seats in automobiles. The following is a summary of open recommendations that, if adopted, would make travel for our youngest citizens even safer than it is today.

For further information on these and other Safety Board recommendations, please contact the Board's Office of Public Affairs at (202) 382-0660.

Child Passenger Protection in Automobiles

The Safety Board is currently conducting a study on child passenger protection in highway crashes. In 1992, 5,669 children under the age of 11 were occupants in passenger car crashes involving at least one fatality. About 19 percent of the children were killed. Restraint usage was known for 1,022 of the 1,083 fatally injured children; about 65 percent of them were unrestrained. The percentage of unrestrained children who were killed (25.6) was almost double that of the percentage of restrained children who were killed (13.6). The data suggest that if all of the children had been restrained, about 350 children who died might have survived.

What is not clear from the accident data is whether injuries are exacerbated by improper use of child safety seats or incompatibility between the child safety seat and the vehicle seatbelt. Further, since the Board's last study of child safety seats in 1983, a new generation of seats is being used. In addition, it is unknown at what age a child is adequately protected by a vehicle seatbelt.

The goal of this study is to examine the overall performance of child occupant restraint systems (safety seats and seatbelts), the adequacy of relevant federal regulations, and the comprehensiveness of State child safety seat and seatbelt use laws. Investigative case studies were begun last year and are expected to be completed by the end of this year. A final Safety Board report is expected to be ready by the summer of 1996.

Lap Belts on Small School Buses

School buses carry about 22 million children a day. About 10 percent of school buses in the United States are estimated to be "small" buses, less than 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight. In 1977, new Department of Transportation construction standards went into effect for school buses, both large and small. In addition to the same enlarged, strengthened, and padded seats required in large school buses, small buses are required to have an installed restraint system at each seating location, in recognition of the fact that the smaller and lighter construction of these vehicles offers less protection in a crash than the bodies of large conventional school buses.

In 1983, the Safety Board issued recommendation H-83-39, to the Governors of all the States:

Review State Laws and regulations and take any necessary legislative action to ensure that passengers in small (more that 10 passengers and less than 10,000 GVWR) school buses and school vans are required to use available restraint systems whenever the vehicle is in motion: ensure that all users of such vehicles are aware of and comply with these provisions.

According to responses received by the Board, only six States required the use of lapbelts on small school buses (Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia). Following the investigation of an accident that occurred in Snyder, Oklahoma in November 1993, the Safety Board last year reiterated recommendation H-83-39 to all States except those six that had adopted mandatory lapbelt use on small buses. The Board believes that lapbelts probably will not protect occupants in the impact area, but that the use of lapbelts may be beneficial to occupants outside the impact area or on its perimeter.

Safety officials, manufacturers, researchers, and advocates continue to disagree regarding the benefits of lapbelts in both large and small school buses. Crash test research suggests that in severe frontal school bus collisions, spinal and head injuries can result from the use of lapbelts. Nonetheless, neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fatal accident reporting data nor Safety Board investigations have identified any accident in which a school bus fatality was due to a seatbelt-induced injury.

The Board's 1987 study on the crashworthiness of large post-standard school buses concluded that lap belt use probably would have resulted in no change in the total number of school bus passengers who died in the crashes investigated, and in the number of surviving passengers who died in the crashes investigated, and in the number of surviving passengers with severe or worse injuries. Based on the investigations of the 43 accidents in the study, the Board did not issue recommendations concerning lapbelts for passengers in large school buses.

The Safety Board plans a further study to investigate large school bus accidents involving restrained children and will focus on the occupant injury-kinematics correlation to determine whether lapbelts provide additional protection or cause injury.

Since the adoption of the 1977 school bus construction standards, there has been a reduction in school bus occupant fatalities and injuries. However, the technological advances that have been made since 1977 in occupant protection (both passive and active) for passenger and commercial vehicles have not been broadly applied to school buses.

Therefore, because of continuing public concern about the need for school bus lapbelts, the Safety Board issued recommendation H-94-10 in the Snyder report, in which it said that it believes that NHTSA should evaluate occupant restraint systems, including those currently required for small school buses. (Such systems could include 3-point lap-shoulder restraints and rear-facing seats.) Based on the results of this evaluation, NHTSA should require the installation of those systems that prove to be effective in reducing occupant deaths, injuries, and ejections. The Board is evaluating NHTSA's response to its recommendation.

Aviation (omitted)

Marine (omitted)