portation evolved its position last year to align itself with the NTSB’s recommendation that lap/shoulder seatbelts be required on all new, large school buses, and that decision to purchase the occupant restraints be made at the local level. Still, NAPT urged NHTSA to complete testing of the efficacy of seatbelts on school buses before mandating their use. “Our belief has been that it would be imprudent to in-
stall new equipment on otherwise extremely safe school buses without knowing definitively that they would con- tinue to be safe for our children. We continue to believe that it is incumbent on NHTSA to complete long-overdue testing, and we will continue to advocate for such action.” The paper states that NAPT will continue to call on
NHTSA to continue testing lap/shoulder belt effective- ness, in untested situations such as water-related and thermal events. NHTSA however confirmed last month to School Trans-
portation News that it “does not test any vehicle for the efficacy of seatbelts in fire or submersion, as there are no applicable safety standards for those specific scenarios.” NAPT Executive Director and CEO Molly Mc-
Gee-Hewitt recognized the questions that the call for such testing raised. “We’ve learned since we wrote [last year’s paper], that NHTSA has never really done testing
in water and thermal events,” she shared. “And while we can’t ask NHTSA to do something they’ve never done before, we’ve had actual instances with thermal events. It raises the question for our members, operationally, of how to train our drivers to handle removal of the seat- belts. They can’t necessarily go up the aisle with a cutter to remove seatbelts if there’s a fire. Their first job is to get the children off. So, we think that it may require more training for drivers and it’s going to require us to look at how do we prepare the kids as well. We can draw on the experiences of other states to support that effort. “But I’m not sure that any of those factors collectively
should prevent us from advancing the discussion about lap/shoulder belts,” she continued, adding that an updat- ed paper from NAPT is expected this year. McGee-Hewitt said a key role for any organization is to
advocate for and represent the needs of its members, and the decision to require lap/shoulder belts is still not fully accepted. Questions on driver liability, along with thermal and submersion events, also remain. “One of the key factors in our discussions was the fact
that, while there are not large numbers of fatalities, there are a sizable number of injuries, and no child should have to cope with pain and hurt to their bodies,” she continued. “As the California study shows, lap/shoulder belts result-
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