Editorial: Crashes show safety issue

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 | 9:01 a.m.

Twenty-three students in Liberty, Mo., were hospitalized Monday when their school bus crashed into cars at an intersection. Two of the students suffered life-threatening injuries and several others were seriously hurt. The students were not wearing seat belts, and neither were the students in two other accidents involving school buses -- one last month in Arlington, Va., that killed two students and injured 14 and one in Ripley, Okla., in March that killed one student and seriously injured another.

On April 26 in New York City, however, the 44 children and two adults who were passengers when a school bus rolled over while taking a Queens exit ramp sustained just just minor neck and back injuries. This bus was equipped with seat belts.

Comparisons of these four accidents naturally raise the question: Why don't all school buses have seat belts? We hope the question is being raised in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which is considering a bill by Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson, D-Las Vegas. The bill would require that seat belts be installed in all Nevada school buses by next year.

Opinions are divided about the effectiveness of seat belts in school buses. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, on its Web site, cites statistics showing that school buses are safer than other vehicles and that a federal requirement for seat belts would "provide little, if any, added protection in a crash." The National Coalition for School Bus Safety, however, on its Web site, says seat belts are an "issue of national priority."

We side with the bus safety coalition. Today's seat belts with lap and shoulder straps can be adjusted for all sizes of schoolchildren, who have grown up with seat belts and would likely use them without being told. If every school bus in the state were equipped with seat belts, it would cost no more than $19 million. This is a bargain compared with the cost of losing a child or exposing children to the dangers of lifelong injuries as they are thrown about during school bus accidents. The law requires everyone else on the road to be buckled up. So why not schoolchildren?