HISD calling for students to use seat belts on buses
Revisions to code of conduct would mandate buckling some, but not all
Nine months after two students died in a school bus wreck, the Houston school district is proposing new rules to encourage seat belt use.
The proposal would spell out in the student code of conduct that students must buckle up if their bus has three-point seat belts, which strap across the waist and shoulder like those in cars. However, on buses with only lap belts, which go across the waist, strapping in would be recommended but not required, said Houston Independent School District spokesman Jason Spencer.
The district has far more buses with lap belts than with three-point belts, but it is moving to add more with the latter. Of the district’s fleet of 1,100 buses, roughly 430 have lap belts. There are only about 90 buses with three-point belts, but for next school year that number is expected to be as high as 150.
The current student code of conduct doesn’t include seat belts, but district officials have said the practice has been to make the use of lap belts optional and three-point belts mandatory.
The school board is expected to vote Thursday on the new rules, which do not go far enough for the leader of the union representing the district’s bus drivers. Wretha Thomas, president of the Houston Educational Support Personnel, said Tuesday that the district should require students to buckle up no matter the type of device.
New recommendations
Most school buses across the country lack seat belts, as transportation experts traditionally have touted the vehicles as the safest mode to get to and from school. However, in November, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommended for the first time that school buses be equipped with seat belts, specifically the more modern three-point ones.
The original proposal from interim Superintendent Ken Huewitt’s administration, presented to the school board Monday, said that the new student code of conduct would require students to fasten lap belts or three-point belts. Spencer told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday that the proposal was being revised to say that lap belts would be encouraged, not required.
“I don’t think it’s a shift so much as there was a miscommunication about what was published (in the agenda) originally,” Spencer said, declining to elaborate.
The HISD school bus that crashed Sept. 15, plummeting off Loop 610, had lap belts, but the four students on board were not wearing them, according to a federal report released in June. The two students who were ejected from the bus died. The two not ejected were seriously injured.
Texas law says that any school buses bought after Sept. 1, 2010, must have three-point belts — if the state has provided funding, which it has not to HISD or most other districts.
Fewer than 10 states require seat belts on school buses, and some of those only mandate lap belts.
Lap belt debate
Deborah Hersman, a former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said views are mixed on lap belts. In cars, she said, lap belts were phased out for three-point belts, because the former contributed in some cases to abdominal and other injuries.
However, she said, even lap belts can have the benefit of keeping students from being ejected from the bus or being tossed into another passenger inside.
Hersman now serves as president of the National Safety Council, which favors three-point belts on all school buses.