I respectfully disagree with Robert Lyons’ stand on seat belts for school buses (Letters, Feb. 10 “Seatbelts: They aren’t needed for buses”).
I was in a school bus accident (we went into a ditch on a no-shoulder road) at an impact speed of 10-15 mph. One child had a back injury, a few had bloodied lips and eyes. I had a torn hip ligament, which is now arthritic.
Where’s the proof that this “compartmentalization” concept works? Videos of accidents prove otherwise. At 25 mph, kids pop out of the seats and become airborne. In a rollover situation, numerous deaths show that kids are ejected and run over, or are cut to pieces by the sheet metal of the bus since the rivets separate in an accident. In our district, many of the buses do 45-55 mph during portions of their route.
My husband was an EMT – unbelted children in a car become missiles that wind up under the dashboard. In the accident I was in, I wound up four seats from where I was sitting, and I was a sophomore in high school.
Discipline on buses could be improved by seat belts – if you are buckled in, you will be sitting properly in the seat, unable to thump on the kid in front of you. You will not be able to move around while the bus is moving and you’ll be attached to something immobile in the event of sudden braking. Do not try to tell me that all the kids are seated properly on a bus – I have seen otherwise firsthand.
We just passed a law about securing speakers into a car – an unbelted kid weighs a whole lot more than a loose speaker. Where’s the common sense? Why are our children “our most precious resource” only if they don’t cost us extra money?
Snohomish
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