We've all been told throughout our lives that the first thing we must do as passengers in a vehicle is be sure to buckle in. We buckle our belts in cars, trucks and jeeps. Some golf carts even feature seat belts. There's one vehicle, however, that escapes the seat belt standard.
The bus.
More importantly, our nation's school buses. Children depend on them to transport them to and from school and home every day. At my school, we even have shuttle buses that transport students between campuses. Some students will board the bus two to four times a day just to attend their classes. Yet, there are no seat belts to keep them safe. (excepting the driver)
Maintaining such strict laws that parents have been put on trial for not belting in their child properly is a useless practice if we do not transfer this strict attitude into our school systems. Why is it that safety stays at home when our children walk out the door? Schools take precautions such as IDs to know everyone in the building in lieu of the recent school shootings, but they do not act on their buses. Will it take accidents and deaths that could have been prevented by seat belts to ensure that school buses are made safe? Will these plastic IDs have to identify the bodies of our sons and daughters to persuade the districts that seat belts are a measure that needs to be taken?
Personally, I have no wish to wake up ready to take a three hour bus ride on my next field trip only to hear that a sweaty sports team or class of shiny eyed kindergarteners died the day before when the yellow danger rolled after a collision with a Mac truck. Our culture is conditioned to believe seat belts are necessity in automobiles but unnecessary on buses. What is it about a bus that isn't as dangerous as a car? Is it that studies show a bus is less likely to turn over with fifty students rather than fifteen? I don't see how it makes students sitting on the edge of seats or the floor safe. Or sitting so cramped that seat belts would require more buses, more money.
Funding isn't easy for schools to acquire, I concede. Of course, the funding will be near impossible to gain for the joint lawsuit against the school district and bus service waiting to leap out at the first sign of fatal danger.
Buses are the most efficient way to do our students a service, but we also must do their lives a service by adding seat belts. By ignoring this need, we disregard safety and student life. Prioritizing helping students get to school means very little if we are unable to guarantee they will make it to school alive and unscathed.
Image Citation:
- "School Bus Kids." N.p., n.d. Web. <http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VfAIUHNgmyE/hqdefault.jpg>.
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