Seat belts and school buses

For the past couple months, news outlets have been reporting on how seat belts in school buses probably would save lives. They reported several students a year are killed because there aren't seat belts in buses. And now there is an agreement on the need for seat belts in school buses, that age-old excuse comes up: "But it is going to cost XX amount of dollars, and the local school systems can't afford it."

Now, honest, doesn't it make sense that if seat belts save lives and injuries in a car, won't they in buses? Makes me wonder who came up with the idea seat belts weren't needed on school buses in the first place. I can't remember when seat belts became mandatory, but it's been probably 20 or 30 years ago. I'd almost bet even then, the "experts" knew we needed to put seat belts on school buses.

A rollover crash involving a school bus would be terrifying.

Rollover crashes are bad in a car, but at least there aren't but inches before you hit the roof of the car. In school buses, there are feet. And when we rode the school bus way back when, we had everything on the bus with us -- coolers and water jugs and uniforms and instruments and on and on.

Now, instead of making it mandatory to install seat belts, it sounds as if it will most likely be a voluntary issue instead because of the cost of fitting the school buses with seat belts. The way it sounds, the local schools will have to fund putting belts in their own buses. Funny how the government can afford about everything, but can't afford seat belts. Pet projects in all of the states make it through congress, with many of them being ridiculous, yet this one item won't. It's a local issue.

Back in high school, which was a bunch of years ago, we rode in an old yellow school bus that probably had 25 seats, and I'm just guessing. Put two students on each seat and you come up with 50 or so students on each bus. Some of our bus drivers, like Ed Cooney, were good drivers. Some weren't such good drivers, and they scared the dickens out of most of us. I would imagine if there had been seat belts, we would have worn them.

About all the school board would have had to do back then was gather up the residents of Arthur County (where I grew up and went to school) and present the need to the residents. And then simply ask for suggestions. Don't think it would have taken long before someone would have suggested funding it with donations. I think all we had was one bus, so maybe 25 seats, which would have meant maybe 45 to 50 seat belts.

Since I live in Scott City, I'll just use it as an example. Scott City has 10 buses. Each bus has about 25 seats, so if you put two children to a seat, that comes to about 50 seat belts. But there are times when there are three little ones per seat, so some of the seats would need three seat belts. I pulled it up on Google, and their figure was between $7,000 and $10,000 per bus. This would figure out about $150 per seat belt. The total cost would be somewhere around $70,000. A lot of money. But that comes to about $300 a seat, give or take a little.

So now down to today. I have grandkids who ride the school bus, so I have a personal stake in this issue.

It's pretty easy to sit in some marble office somewhere and say we need to put seat belts in buses but it's too expensive. No, frankly, when it comes to our kids and grandkids, a life saved may be my grandchild or yours. Kind of like the new safe room out at the Scott City school. That was a great addition to the building.

My wife and I don't make a lot of money. We pinch our pennies. We work pretty much all summer laying in a good supply of firewood to save a little on heat during the winter. We grow and can vegetables and such not only to have good eats, but also to save on grocery bills. We raise our own beef because it tastes good, but it also cuts down on the meat bill. We have basic satellite with none of the movie or fancy channels. Saying all this, we would find a way to fund one or two seat belts for our school buses or to equip a seat with belts. And I'm betting most parents and grandparents would as well.

This is just my opinion. There are times when it's said, "We can't afford to!", but there are times when we need to say, "We can't afford not to!"

Have a good one,

Until next time.