We Finally Have an Answer to Why School Buses Don’t Have Seat Belts

Call me weird if you’d like, but there has always been one curiosity that has stuck out to me. With all the safety precautions that we use for our children, it’s kind of strange that we wouldn’t have seatbelts in school buses. After all, a massive vehicle used pretty much exclusively for kids is something that we would think would have the highest safety standards of them all. Why in the world would school buses not come equipped with safety belts?

This time, we dig into just that question and the answer isn’t something that’s exactly black-and-white. Instead, there seems to be all sorts of theories on why this phenomenon exists. Some seem to think that it’s because of safety reasons and others argue that the only reason school buses don’t have seatbelts is because of the added cost.

We’re sure that this is a debate that’s going to go on for ages. However, there are some very reasonable considerations on both sides.

One side of the argument says that safety belts might actually make a school bus more dangerous. Evacuation without the belts could theoretically be much easier. In turn, the seats on a bus are designed to leave children in a safe position. In this position, they’re less likely to end up being injured in a crash. Because of the orientation and proximity of the seats to one another, apparently, occupants will have a padded fall. However, others disagree and some crash tests have shown the contrary. At the end of the day, though, odds say that those inside of one of these bright yellow buses are far less likely to get into an accident than they are in pretty much any other vehicle on the roadways. That’s not hard to believe with the strict laws and sheer visibility with busses.

Perhaps the more prevalent argument is cost. It’s not really something that one would think would be all that expensive. However, when everything is said and done, thousands of dollars need to be spent in order to outfit busses with seatbelts. That’s on top of the cost of the bus itself and maintaining it. We might tell ourselves that the safety of our children is paramount but at the end of the day, that money really does have to come from somewhere.

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By following along with the video below, we get to dive into all these concepts and more. Should school buses all be forced to have seatbelts or are they fine as is?