Georgia bus crash Tom Smith

I find news reports of this bus crash in Georgia rather upsetting.  Apparently four members of a college baseball team from a small town in Ohio are dead, and more critically injured players may die as well.  It sounds like the driver fell asleep at the wheel.  The driver and his wife were also killed reportedly.  There are no skid marks indicating he tried to stop before flying off the overpass.

I don’t understand why (most) buses don’t have seatbelts.  It seems likely if these kids had been wearing seatbelts, fewer of them would have died and been seriously injured. (However, I haven’t be able to verify whether the bus that crashed had seat belts or not, but most charter buses do not.) But no doubt the players were going to wear batting helmets at their games. 

The lack of belts can’t be because they would not dramatically increase the safety of bus riders.  Some states do not have motorcycle helmet laws, but this is because there is a vocal minority of motor cyclists who lobby for their right to dash their brains out on the pavement if they want to, making a kind of self-evidentiary argument that such accidents involve a less than typical loss of brain matter.  I tend to agree with them, though it would be even better if there were an enforcible waiver so that the taxpayer did not have to pick up the expenses of any head trauma treatment.  But parents would be only too willing, I should think, to see their children belted into their seats.  My memories of riding the bus include many bus drivers shouting to kids to take their seats and stay in them, as well as some kid riders who should have been belted into seats at every opportunity. 

So what gives?  Do school districts lobby against seat belt laws?  Do bus manufacturing companies resist the idea?  The marginal benefit of requiring airbags on top of already required lap and shoulder restraints must be, well, marginal compared to belting kids into seats so they don’t bounce around like kingpins if the bus rolls over.  It sounds like the bus involved here was a private charter bus, but I have never seen one of those with seatbelts either.   

Here’s an old story from the Washington Post.  From this story, one would infer the problem is the cost of putting belts in, and the claim that they would not increase safety that much, of which I am skeptical.  The argument that buses are the “safest vehicles on the road” deserves some testing as well.  Besides, that is entirely beside the point.  The question is whether the cost of putting belts in is greater or less than the anticipated benefits.  Baseball is a lot safer than skydiving, but it is still a good idea for the catcher to wear a cup.  If it really would cost only $1800 per bus to install belts, it is hard to believe the expected benefits would not be greater.  The argument that increasing the costs of buses would force school districts to have fewer of them, so more kids would be forced to take more dangerous modes of transportation to school, is worth thinking about, though I suspect these districts spend a lot more money on many useless objects far less valuable than accident safety.