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3 Teens killed in school bus crash in Huntsville (Ala.)


kayman

Seatbelts on school belts  

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  1. 1. Should school buses have seatbelts?

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3 die in school bus crash in Alabama

30 other high school students taken to hospital, several in critical condition

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - A bus carrying high school students smashed through a guardrail along an overpass Monday and crashed nose-first 30 feet below, killing three teenage girls and injuring at least 30 other people, several critically, authorities said.

Students on the school bus, which had no seat belts, were screaming when rescue workers arrived.

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We had a bus driver in high school who took us between campuses, and he was a friggin psycho. He'd been shot in the head when he was younger, and loved to show off the scar. I think the bullet must still be lodged in his head, because the dude is seriously whacked out.

One day a girl in the back of the bus asked him for a nose tissue. All he had was a roll of paper towels, so he leaned back out of his seat and threw it to her. When she was finished, she yelled back to him and he once again leaned back to catch the paper towels. BOTH his hands were off the wheel at this point, he was out of his seat, and he was looking toward the back of the bus. We all started screaming at him when we saw that the cloverleaf on the freeway was coming up and we were about to take a 50-foot drop off the overpass. He corrected, jerking the bus back onto the clverleaf... but barely. We were so close to going off that overpass, and that still haunts me to this day.

I've been in a few accidents and many near accidents, often at high rates of speed, but that was the closest I've ever actually been to dying in a vehicle of any kind. Man, we were bouncing all over that bus. Seatbelts would have kept us in our seats, and may have even saved us during the fall, but they certainly wouldn't have made me feel any better about the situation! :lol:

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Back when I was in college, bus safety improvements were the senior design project. In our research, it turned out that they used compartmentalization instead of seat belts. Basically, the idea was that in an accident, the students would hit the padded seat in from of them.

Seat belts aren't installed in buses for the following reasons:

1) Compartmentalization works well in over 99% of the crashes. Most school bus crashes are low speed events.

2) Seat belts were used as weapons against other students whenthey were installed. I was surprised by this back then. Not so much now.

Seems like there were a couple of other reasons, cost/benefit probably being one of them,but I'm recalling something from almost 20 years ago.

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We had a bus driver in high school who took us between campuses, and he was a friggin psycho. He'd been shot in the head when he was younger, and loved to show off the scar. I think the bullet must still be lodged in his head, because the dude is seriously whacked out.

One day a girl in the back of the bus asked him for a nose tissue. All he had was a roll of paper towels, so he leaned back out of his seat and threw it to her. When she was finished, she yelled back to him and he once again leaned back to catch the paper towels. BOTH his hands were off the wheel at this point, he was out of his seat, and he was looking toward the back of the bus. We all started screaming at him when we saw that the cloverleaf on the freeway was coming up and we were about to take a 50-foot drop off the overpass. He corrected, jerking the bus back onto the clverleaf... but barely. We were so close to going off that overpass, and that still haunts me to this day.

I've been in a few accidents and many near accidents, often at high rates of speed, but that was the closest I've ever actually been to dying in a vehicle of any kind. Man, we were bouncing all over that bus. Seatbelts would have kept us in our seats, and may have even saved us during the fall, but they certainly wouldn't have made me feel any better about the situation! :lol:

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All due respect, I am not going to believe that the sole reason three students died in this crash was because they did not have seat belts. People can come up with all kinds of statistic for whatever immediate object they connected with, but the fact is belt or no, they would have connected with something or someone. What really gets me is that no one is saying a single thing about the fact that the school bus was able to crash through a barrier 30 feet above the ground! People have to start worrying about fixing the dangers, not trying to promote causes.

I for one am a little leary of the ide of belts on school busses. Who is going to watch 50 kids to make sure they are keeping them on right, put them on right, are done in a way that is actually going to keep them in their seat instead of simply strangling them, submarining them, or splitting them in two? A seat belt worn wrong is far more dangerous than anything else.

It's a sad occurance. Do we have to turn it into a public battle?

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Having been in TWO school bus accidents when I was in elementary school, one resulting in 14 stitches on the left side of my head, I am a STRONG proponent of seatbelts in school buses. Our children should have the means to secure themselves in their seats while riding to school. With traffic these days and the "dolts" out there driving, I don't understand local school board's and governments reluctance to make this a mandatory requirement. To many children are being hurt and killed!!!

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Yes. By all means seat belts should be installed in school buses and kids made to wear them. In fact, I think it should be made a law to do so. I've only learned of these teens being killed just now. But I do remember watching a video clip of a bus going out of control due to the driver passing out. The bus hit a bump in the road at high speed causing several kids to be thrown out of their seats, slammed onto the ceiling, and then thrown on the floor. Fortunately one of the older kids had enough sense to take the driver's foot off the accelerator and apply the brakes with his hand.

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that article hits on a few good points, mainly that children would wear them improperly. it states that lap belts could cause more harm than good and shoulder belts would be necessary. you run into 2 problems with shoulder belts, the first is that they aren't made for small children without adapters. the second that children like to put the shoulder strap behind their backs, making the whole seatbelt pointless. now if the bus had all these belts, the slightest problem would end up in a lawsuit because the bus driver did not make sure all the children wore them properly at all times.

i rode a short bus for a year when i was in 8th grade. it had lap belts (it was basically a large van). i've never been on a full school bus that did not have them. part of the problem is that students carry a lot of books in their bags and other things with them on the bus. these bags have to go somewhere and often times they end up on the seat, also causing problems when they fly around. if all children sat properly on the seats and did not jump around and cause trouble, everyone would be a lot safer in an accident. cases like this one where the bus flips off an overpass are rare. i'm also fairly against school buses on long highway trips.

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