I just read this story about a 5 year old who died in a school bus accident when the bus hit a ditch then a tree in GA. I remember a case from last year where 6 kids died in TN bus crash. This reminds me of a patient I had not to long ago. A school bus crashed coming back from a football game killing the coach, his son, and injuring others. I took care of one patient who had a traumatic brain injury and skull fracture. It just seems strange to me that in 2017 it’s not mandatory or at least an available option to have seat belts on buses. Yearly roughly 10 people die on school buses of which most are kids. This story is heart breaking especially the part of about the 5 year old’s sister having to tell the Good Samaritan that her sister was dead.

Girl, 5, dead after school bus crashes into tree

HINESVILLE, Georgia --
A school bus driver on her early pick-up route lost control on a dirt road and smashed into a tree Tuesday, killing a 5-year-old girl and sending 21 other children to hospitals.

The crash happened on a foggy morning just before 7 a.m. as the bus was gathering Taylors Creek Elementary School students in tiny Gum Branch, a city of fewer than 300 residents that backs onto a large military community about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Savannah.

It's too soon for investigators to know if the 62-year-old driver, who also was hospitalized, will face any charges, said Lt. Thornell King of the Georgia State Patrol. King said video from a security camera on the bus showed her struggling with the gear shift right before the crash.

"The driver, she made a right-hand turn and she hit a bump," probably a roadside ditch, King said. "After she hit the bump, you can clearly see on the video her struggling with the gear shift as if to put the bus in park or trying to slow it down."

King said it did not appear on the video that the driver was accelerating at high speed, and he said it was possible that "something malfunctioned" on the bus.

King identified the girl killed in the crash as 5-year-old Cambria Shuman. He said she had been sitting in one of the front-row passenger seats. The bus had no seat belts.

Clay Rowe was driving on Highway 196, which runs parallel to the road where the crashed happened, early Tuesday when he saw flashing lights through the trees. He turned onto the dirt road and saw the bus with its passenger-side wheels in a ditch and its front end smashed against a tree. He saw crying children who had escaped through the bus's rear emergency exit.

"They were distraught," Rowe said. "They weren't hurt bad, but a couple of them were bleeding from nicks and cuts."

Rowe said he called 911, then had the children gather at his pickup truck. He knelt and prayed with them. Then one girl told him: "My sister's dead."

Rowe said he went back to the bus, hoping the girl was wrong. He said he found one child still inside, and it was obvious she wasn't alive. The driver was moaning in her seat, he said, trapped by twisted metal and debris.

By Tuesday evening, a teddy bear and two small flower arrangements had been left at the crash scene. The impact left deep gouges in the trunk of a tree, where a strip of metal was stuck in the wood and shards of glass littered the ground.

Kayla Reinert said her two children were waiting for the bus, which crashed before reaching their stop. She found them another ride to school and didn't learn of the crash until after she got home.

"It's just tragic," Reinert said. "It really hits close. My children could easily have been on that bus too."

The impact caused the bus roof to cave in on the young passengers, the State Patrol said in a news release. All of the other children on board were taken to nearby hospitals to be treated for "bumps and scrapes and lacerations," said Mike Hodges, the Liberty County public safety director.

The impact trapped the driver in the crushed front section of the bus. She was taken to a Savannah hospital after being freed by emergency responders. Her condition wasn't known immediately, but King said she had been conscious and talking with school officials.

Hodges confirmed roads had been foggy in the area early Tuesday. But authorities said it was too early to know if weather played a role in the crash.

Debra Wells said her two grandchildren live on the same bus route, though she drives them to school. She saw the flashing lights of police cars and dozens of emergency responders as she was forced to take a detour around the crash site Tuesday morning.

Wells said she was grateful the toll wasn't much worse. She had been discussing the crash all day with customers at the convenience store where she works.

"Everybody is very sad for the family," Wells said.
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http://abc7chicago.com/girl-5-...l-bus-crash/2746576/

Seatbelts are not a one size fits all proposition. You certainly can't mandate booster seats as well.

i wonder how many lives could be saved by having all passenger seats facing the rear, you know, like a mac flight.

quote:

like a mac flight.

Ha I remember those,damn jump seats sucked

As I understand it Dusty, the issue is with being able to safely get 50-70 people out of those seat belts in case of an upset/rollover or fire. Not saying I agree with anything that I said, just passing on what I was told.

I think I have seen a bus or two that had a lap only belt. I really dont know if that will help you much since the upper body and head will not be controlled.

It would also be one hell of a task to keep a bus full of kids to keep a seatbelt on.

Also 10 deaths a year is such tiny percentage I dont think it is given too much thought. I agree that 10 is still too many.

Maybe just lap belts? I do know that the patient I treated was ejected out through the front window. Maybe not driving school buses down unpathed dirt roads is the answer

In Florida I can tell you that Daycare buses must be equipped with seatbelts even though the same type and model of school bus for public schools will not have seatbelts. (and are not required to)

quote:

Originally posted by mutedblade:
As I understand it Dusty, the issue is with being able to safely get 50-70 people out of those seat belts in case of an upset/rollover or fire. Not saying I agree with anything that I said, just passing on what I was told.

Posts: 1180 | Location: Lake Anna, VA | Registered: May 07, 2012 Reply With QuoteReport This Post
gpbst3
Member
posted December 12, 2017 08:57 AM Hide Post
I think I have seen a bus or two that had a lap only belt. I really dont know if that will help you much since the upper body and head will not be controlled.

It would also be one hell of a task to keep a bus full of kids to keep a seatbelt on.



It takes on avarage of 3 minutes for a fire to breach the bus, it takes an average of 1 minute to evacuate a bus with 25 to 60 kids with no seat belts, about 2 minutes on a special needs bus with an average of 10 kids with seat belts.

Since school buses are one of the safest forms of transportation, and even in roll over accidents death is very unlikely, but almost a sure thing with seat belts, well, you can see the resistance in it.

The big problem is keeping the kids IN the seats, with or without seat belts. Also, as the high back seats close together compartmentalize the passengers, if they are sitting with their bottoms on the seat, backs to the seat backs and feet on the floor, most, if not all injuries would not happen.

Controlling 50+ kids, yelling, jumping, standing with moron drivers pulling out infront of you, cutting you off, running your stop arm with more liability then the teachers in their nice warm classrooms, with everyone complaining about"the bus is late", "the bus came early". "My child didn't do that the driver is lying". It's no wonder almost every school district is low on bus drivers.

So to answer your question about seat belts, most likely more lives would be lost with them to fire, and submerging than would be saved.



ARman

quote:

Originally posted by ARman:

Since school buses are one of the safest forms of transportation, and even in roll over accidents death is very unlikely, but almost a sure thing with seat belts, well, you can see the resistance in it.

Are you saying that seatbelts INCREASE the risk of injury/death in a rollover? Can you explain why? This doesn't make sense to me.

quote:

The big problem is keeping the kids IN the seats, with or without seat belts.

If they ever put seatbelts in busses, and forced kids to wear them, they would need at LEAST one new paid employee per bus to make sure the kids were all wearing them. Drivers are over-tasked already, and there is no way the driver can make sure that the kids are all wearing them. I know that when I was school-age, I wasn't the most compliant, obedient, model student. We did all sorts of stuff to defy authority. Telling me, back then, to wear my seatbelt would be the best way possible to guarantee I DIDN'T wear it.

It would also be a huge liability issue. After mandatory seat belts are installed, any accident where a child is injured where the kid wasn't wearing the belt would incur major lawsuits by the parents against the school board (and/or whoever owns the busses).

This doesn't even cover the 'booster seat' issue. As stated earlier, it would be hard to have one seat belt that covers every child's size (K-12) adequately. They would need many more busses just to accommodate the different child sizes. The costs would be incredibly prohibitive. . .



I almost died on a school bus TWICE (same bus, same driver, same location, different days). He had a habit of pulling out from an intersection in front of semis coming down a hill. I was in the rear left-hand seat, and I recall looking out my window at the giant grill of this speeding Kenworth coming RIGHT AT ME. Two times. A seat belt would not have mattered one bit had the semi not locked up his brakes (both times). I don't think that driver ever killed anybody, but he came with in about 3 feet at least those two times that I personally witnessed.

Very sad.

I don't think in the overall - seatbelts would be a big difference-maker. And would open up a lot of 'unintended consequences'.

Can you imagine a big bus crash and instead of a possible rapid egress 'Everybody out the back!!' you have 15-20 'buckled up' 5 year-olds burned to death?

No thanks.

---------------------

The problem with seat belts is how do you keep the kids in the seat belts. Half the time the bus driver cant keep the kids in the seats.

Pretty soon we'll have so many laws to protect people that they won't be able to leave their homes.

NHTSA has done plenty of research on this question and come to the correct conclusion - that school buses are safer on the whole without seat belts for the passengers.

** We're only talking about full sized buses here. "Short buses", which are more like passenger vans on utility truck chassis are different and come w/ mandatory seatbelts.

1) School buses are big and heavy. Physics still controls in MVAs and the bus is going to win against most any passenger vehicle.

2) Buses ride very high. See note above re: physics and MVA winners/losers.

3) The passengers are compartmentalized in highly padded seating, which is more than sufficient in most MVAs to prevent serious injury.

4) In an event requiring evacuation, seatbelts would make the task extremely slow.

Just last year, one of the buses in my school system caught on fire (I don't recall the reason). It was totally engulfed in flames within minutes. The driver truly was heroic and acted very quickly to evacuate the kids. Nobody was harmed.

If there had been seatbelts in use on that bus, there is no doubt in my mind that many children would have died.

-Rob

Why not airbags? If seat belts are so confining. In this day of enlightenment surely there must be a way of safe containment in accidents for our children. And I have heard the arguments from non-seat belt wearers that they could be trapped under water or if a fire from accidents. There are always exceptions and I have seen a number of them but seat belts and airbags do indeed save lives.

Air bags don't work unless the passenger is held in place by a seat belt, or a confining bucket seat. Otherwise, you've just got people being bounced around in a vehicle by the impact of the air bag. In a school bus, you'd just have children ricocheting off the roof, and each other.

For myself, I would never consider driving a school bus with seat belts for the children. Waaaayy too much liability in this lawsuit-happy country we live in.

air bags are very very specific.
if the kids are in the wrong position, they might do much more damage when deployed.

just line the whole bus with 4 inchs of wrestling mat .

its rarely the first hit that kills a passenger, these days,
most often its the 2nd ( head face hitting a hard surface)
or the third hit
The brain hitting the skull interior, that does the most damage.

School busses have a very low rate of deaths and injuries per mile, much lower than cars.
This has been studied and the cost/benefit ratio (and I dont mean in dollars) just isnt there.

quote:

Originally posted by Fla. Jim:
Why not airbags? If seat belts are so confining. In this day of enlightenment surely there must be a way of safe containment in accidents for our children. And I have heard the arguments from non-seat belt wearers that they could be trapped under water or if a fire from accidents. There are always exceptions and I have seen a number of them but seat belts and airbags do indeed save lives.

Airbags aren't intended for small children. Some kids have been killed by airbag activations (hence, the "kids in the back seat" rule). Also, as has been stated, airbags require the occupants to be in seat belts to effectively work.

10 deaths per year is an EXTREMELY good statistic (and I realize it's horrible if one of those 10 kids were your own). It's not ideal, of course, but trying to reduce that number to zero/year isn't very practical, IMO.

People try to litigate EVERY aspect of risk from our lives. There simply is no way to eliminate every death.

Video in link says that there is on average 1 bus fire every day....Lends a little more credibility to why there aren't seat belts in school buses.


Iowa student and driver die in school bus fire

An Iowa school bus became engulfed in flames this morning, killing the driver and a student who were onboard, according to authorities.

The bus began its route about 7 a.m. in the farm town of Oakland before backing out of one home's driveway and landing in a ditch where it caught fire, Pottawattamie County officials said.

The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office identified the driver as Donald Hendricks, 74, and the student as Megan Klindt, 16.

“[The bus] was backing out of the driveway, and ended up in the opposite side ditch and a fire ensued; and the driver and one student was unable to get off the bus,” Sheriff’s Office Lt. Rob Ambrose told reporters at the scene.

The crash occurred just outside Klindt's home just after she had been picked up by the driver, Ambrose told ABC News.

They were the only people on board, authorities said, adding that an investigation is underway.

That will include the National Transportation Safety Board, which tweeted this afternoon that it is on the way to the crash site.

The Riverside Community School District issued a statement, saying, "Our hearts go out to their families and loved ones."

It added, "School is in session and a Crisis Team from the Green Hills Area Education Agency along with area schools counselors and many community volunteers have been deployed to all our buildings to assist students and staff."