Seymour Community Schools in Indiana has installed lap/should seatbelts on 34 of the 47 school buses in the fleet.
How does Cohn respond to people who are still under
the impression that seatbelts might make evacuations take longer if the driver needs to cut seatbelts? “There is no more pressure required to unbuckle the seatbelt if the wearer is upside down than right-side-up,” he shared. “The dangerous part of evacuating a bus are the choke points at the exits, not the seatbelts. Seatbelts give our kids the best opportunity to survive. Then, they are able to exit the bus.” Tim Fosbrink, the transportation supervisor of Seymour Community Schools in Indiana, has been pur- chasing buses with retractable seatbelts since 2013. “The elementary students are much more likely to
stay buckled up during the ride,” he said. “Seatbelts keep the younger children from reaching into other seats. Keeping them seated eliminates about 90-percent of the problems. With our older riders, you will have that defi-
ance issue where they want to unbuckle and move, but eventually, we’ll have a generation of students who have grown up buckling their seatbelts in their parent’s cars and in the school bus.” Fosbrink currently has IMMI seatbelts on 34 out of
47 of his buses. He said purchasing new buses with seatbelts will eventually make his entire fleet even safer. “Compartmentalization has done a wonderful job through the years, but I believe seatbelts save more lives, and solve many behavior issues as well,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before buckling up on the bus is a habit for every student.” He added that Seymour Community Schools requires elementary students to take a 20-minute training pro- gram on bus safety that includes proper seatbelt usage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sponsored a project to understand how school
Visit
stnonline.com/go/8t for information on the lack of standardized training regulations nationwide for anyone involved in the transportation of pre-K students.
48 School Transportation News • MAY 2021
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