HEADLINES Seat Belt Resolution Supported on District Level During the NCST in May, no mention
was made of any of the previously passed resolutions, including one concerning seat belt usage by school bus drivers. It came almost a year before the Huntsville, Ala., crash, in which four students died after their school bus was struck by a passenger car and plunged off a highway overpass. Te driver was not wearing his seat belt and was ejected from the bus during the collision. As a result, no one was in control of the vehicle before it left the highway and fell some 60 feet. But, for many districts, it doesn’t take a tragedy much less a resolution to take no- tice of the issue. “You cannot stay in control of your ve-
hicle if you’re thrown to the floor, or worse yet, ejected out of the bus, as in Alabama. It amazes me in this day and age you have to continually preach about common sense practices,” said Denise Capasso, transporta-
tion director for Old Bridge Township (N.J.) Board of Education. To keep situations like this from hap-
pening, Capasso not only trains her drivers to wear the restraints, she had ne- on-orange seat belt covers with reflective strips made for each of her 60 buses. “It’s my job to make sure all our students
are safe, and if it takes doing seat belt checks or neon covers, then that’s what I’ll do. If a driver is caught not wearing a seat belt, they will be reprimanded. If they receive a ticket, they will be suspended,” added Capasso. Te no-nonsense policies abound con-
cerning seat belts in a number of districts. In Alhambra Elementary School District in Phoenix, Coordinator of Transportation and Safety Chuck Fehr follows the lead of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which enforces minimum standards for school buses. It is a violation to operate a
school bus without lap/shoulder belts, and if Fehr finds out one of his drivers is skirt- ing the standard, they are first met with a written reprimand and then, for a second offense, nothing short of termination. Back in Alabama, where a study assessing
the impact of the installation of lap/shoul- der seat belts on school buses for students is ongoing, drivers must not only comply with state law, they must advertise that compli- ance with a 4-by-6-inch permanent warning sticker informing drivers that seat belt use is mandatory. Te sticker is affixed above the driver compartment and is provided by the state Department of Education. “Also, our state department has stated
that any driver who is in an accident or ticketed for not wearing a seat belt will lose their state certification,” said Jimmy M. Boone, director of transportation for Tus- caloosa City Schools. ■
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©2009 IMMI All rights reserved. 07/09
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