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Safety Administration, long a proponent of school bus lap-shoulder belts from his time as a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. Rosekind has since moved on to private industry with an autonomous vehicle start up, but he remains passionate about school bus safety and says school buses can and should be made even safer than they already are. “You don’t need the government to tell industry what to do when the technology is available now,” says Rosekind.
THE RESEARCH Stark points out for viewers that Rosekind “shocked” the student transportation com- munity by urging that all school buses have lap-shoulder belts during the NAPT Summit in November of 2015, despite previous research and statements made by NHTSA that large school buses should not be mandated to be equipped with the occupant restraint systems. NHTSA has gone on record stating that, on average, one additional student might be saved each year in school bus crashes as a result of three-point seat belts. In- stead, it recommended that local school districts or states make the decision that is right for them, so long as passenger capacity is not reduced and funding is available. Te Education Week segment on PBS News Hour also discusses the benefits of
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compartmentalization for students seated between high-backed and cushioned school bus seats, especially in frontal and rear collisions. But it demonstrates with Dr. Kristin Poland of NTSB and video of a 2014 Kansas City school bus rollover as well as from the IMMI Center for Advanced Product Evaluation in Indiana how compartmentalization is compromised in side-impact and rollover crashes, as unbelted students can be thrown into each other, across the aisle, onto the floor and elsewhere. Poland, a senior biomechanical engineer, demonstrates in crash-test videos how lap-shoulder belts provide the most complete protection for students by keeping them upright in place on their seats during various crash scenarios. Meanwhile, two-point lap belts provide partial protection and no seat belts at all allow free bodily movement and little if any protection from side-impact and rollover crash forces. Another challenge facing student transporters is requiring students to wear the restraints,
according to the report. One student riding a school bus says on camera that she sometimes forgets to buckle up or simply unbuckles because she doesn’t feel like wearing the restraint. But Allison Stoos responds that at least the student has the option, one not available to her about a decade ago. “I didn’t have that choice to buckle up and protect myself,” she adds.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE? In March 2006, Stoos was riding on a bus not built to school bus standards with the
Josh Rice
Dir. of Transportation New Caney ISD, TX
rest of her high school soccer team in West Brook, Texas to a game when the bus crashed and overturned. Teammates Alicia Bonura, 18, and Ashley Brown, 16, were killed. Several other girls, including Stoos, were critically injured when they were ejected. One teammate needed her arm amputated. Te crash was instrumental in the 2007 passage of a Texas state law requiring lap-shoul- der belts on all school buses. But dedicated funding has never been available to school districts as the law required. To date, the law remains unenforceable and voluntary. Eleven years later, Stoos continues to have limited use of her left arm, despite several surgeries. She says she grows more frustrated every time she learns of a fatal school buses crash. Parents of the West Brook soccer team also appealed to NASDPTS a decade ago to
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advocate change throughout the school bus industry, which eventually resulted in the association publishing a white paper in February 2014, available at
stnonline.com/go/9r, that supports school district decisions to adopt lap-shoulder belts or state laws as long as “a thorough consideration of available resources” such as funding mechanisms, usage policies and training programs are made. Charlie Hood, executive director for NASDPTS, told state director and associate members that Education Week did reach out to the organization. “Given the limitations of covering this complex topic in a time-limited broadcast piece, we were relatively pleased with the accuracy and unbiased nature of the report,” he wrote in an email the next day. ●
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