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want to go through that phase of slipping back to anything goes,” he said. Mauzy pointed out that the seat belts “unfortunately don’t have a mute switch,” but
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they “dramatically” eliminate many issues. “I think that, obviously, it’s a safety benefit for the students and driver and all, but it’s also a student control benefit,” he said. “But you have to make up your mind to work with students to conform to riding with a seat belt, keeping students in their seat rather than bouncing around, tempting them to get up. Seat belts keep them contained.” He said elementary students are the easiest to teach, and in turn they hold each other accountable for continued usage “because they’ll tattle” if someone unbuckles. Older students, he added, tend to be more independent and even defiant. So, he makes a habit of walking the bus aisle to make sure students are and remain buckled up. He said he’s even been known to pull over to the side of the road just to check. “On the way out of the school you’d get near 100-percent compliance,” advised
Mauzy. “Younger kids are more social and work together. Older kids are more inde- pendent and don’t want to squeal. It’s mostly a driver responsibility to hold students accountable. Don’t be casual.” While Indiana is one of 43 states that have yet to mandate seat belts in large school buses, Bartholomew Consolidated opted to become the first public school district to adopt them (Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis was the first school to add three- point seat belts in 2002), and several districts have since followed suit. It doesn’t hurt that Westfield, Indiana is the headquarters of IMMI, the manufacturer of the SafeGuard brand of school bus seating systems and seat belts. Te company’s Center for Advanced Product Evaluation, or CAPE, was the site of the Aug. 21 remote-controlled, side- impact collision that pitted a semi-truck against the school bus. Te crash attempted to simulate the fatal Port St. Lucie, Florida crash on March 26, 2012, which the National Transportation Safety Board has cited as an example of why three-point seat belts should be in all school buses. Don Carter agrees that lap-shoulder belts should be on all school buses. He’s the di-
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rector of transportation for St. Lucie County Public Schools, and responded to the scene that fateful Monday. Te school bus was equipped with two-point lap belts per Florida state law, and most students were wearing them, including 9-year-old Aaron Beauchamp. But the seat pan on which Beauchamp was sitting separated from the frame during the high-speed collision and flung him out of the seat and against the bus roof. It is believed to be the first fatal school bus crash that NTSB investigators could later view in
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A Des Moines Public Schools student buckles up at the start of the school bus ride. 48 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2017
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