State Senate Passes Bill Requiring Seat Belts in Schoolbusses

The Texas Senate has approved a law requiring seatbelts on all Texas school busses. Starting September 1, 2010, each bus purchased by Texas school systems will have to be equipped with seatbelts.

The bill came into being largely because of a tragic accident. On March 29, 2006, a school bus carrying the West Brook High School soccer team flipped over killing two teenage girls. Dubbed “Ashley and Alicia’s Bill,” the new law will require three-point seatbelts on every school bus.

School busses, because of their high center of gravity, are more prone to rolling over than other cars and even SUVs. The federal government has been trying to reduce these rollovers by passing U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard #220 in 1977. Technology has advanced a long way in the last 30 years and electronic stability controls now make it even harder for school busses to tip over, but they still do.

Unfortunately, the bill will not require that school districts begin replacing their old busses with the safer ones. Texas believes that it will cost the state about $580 million in the 2011-2012 school year alone to begin to replace the busses.

The National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services estimates that school bus rides transport 24 million students a year for a total of 4 billion miles traveled.

Texas joins five other states (New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, California, and Florida) in proposing a school bus seatbelt law. The law is now being turned over to the House of Representatives for consideration. It is expected that the Texas Educational Association will draft regulations that will require students to wear the safety belts and impose disciplinary actions for those students who elect not to.

The passage of this law means that our children will be safer. While school bus accidents are relatively rare, when they do happen they affect everyone in the community. We are glad to see that Texas is taking a common sense approach to the safety of it’s schoolchildren.

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