Buckle up, and down

Never can know when the thing tumps over

JUST BEFORE school let out a few months ago, a school bus was involved in an accident with a dump truck in New Jersey, killing a teacher and a pretty little girl. It was big news. The Washington Post and CNN covered it. One of the drivers involved apparently had a number of traffic violations.

That got some folks in Jersey asking, on the record, whether school buses were the safest way to transport kids to school.

The answer to that question: Yes, yes they are.

School bus wrecks are so rare that they make news. And a fatal one is so rare that it makes national news. Buses are the whales of the streets. Nothing eats the big ones.

They are bright, with lights like Christmas trees. They stop at railroad crossings. They have their own flashing stop signs. They are only on the road at certain times, and certain days.

But they aren’t perfect.

Why not require seat belts in school buses, just as the state does with other vehicles? Such a requirement would be one more check against any kind of accident leading to sorrow. Louisiana, Florida and Texas do it—or will soon. Along with a handful of northeastern states. This isn’t a blue-state idea.

And why does it have to be a state idea at all? Remember, government is best the closer it gets to the people. Let school districts tax themselves—if they choose—to pay for the additional costs. Call it pay as you go, or rather as these safer school buses go.

The price of a new school bus equipped with safety belts could run as much as $10,000 more per bus—as we have learned over the years as this idea has wafted in then out of Arkansas. But, tell us, Gentle Reader, how much is a child’s life worth?

Six kids were killed when a school bus crashed in neighboring Tennessee a few years back. It can’t happen here? It’s already happened here—in 2003— when a school bus out of Siloam Springs crashed, killing one student and hurting many more. A couple of decades earlier, four students and five teachers were lost as their bus turned over in a ditch as they were trying to make a hairpin turn on Arkansas 18.

Kids who grow up using seat belts in the family car have to wonder, when they climb aboard their school bus, why none are in sight there. And they do well to wonder. Our school administrators can offer plenty of transparent excuses for their cavalier attitude about their charges’ safety but no acceptable reasons.

The conclusions to be drawn from all the statistical evidence for whether requiring seat belts on school buses saves lives can be argued over and again, but plain old common sense should tell most of us that if we can’t prevent school bus crashes, we can prevent most of the fatalities that sometimes come with them. Indeed, it’s way past time to protect our kids. The feds already require smaller school buses that may carry only 10 to 20 kids to come equipped with the familiar three-point seat belts. Let’s make the larger buses—and the kids that use them— just as safe.

As for the costs, which are real: It would seem school districts might could afford staggered $10,000 bills every few years, with every new bus, if they built fewer $100 million school campuses complete with indoor football practice facilities.

Come, let us reason together. And protect our kids.