School Buses and Safety: A Literature Review

School Buses and Safety: A Literature Review

Countless children ride the school bus to school every day. While this is often out of consideration of the time and monetary resources of the parents, it is also important to consider the safety of children who take the bus to school. Accidents involving buses and trucks are often serious. This is because the sheer size of the vehicles involved can lead to serious traumatic injuries, such as bone fractures, or even wrongful death. These accidents are far more tragic if they involve school buses with the lives of children on board. When thinking about the safety of school buses, there are several points that people need to keep in mind:

Seat Belts First

The first is to make sure that the buses have seat belts for every child on board. While these are lap belts only, it is better to have shoulder straps to go along with the lap belts. If children are involved in an accident without a shoulder strap, their abdomen could be restrained as their upper body moves forward. This can lead to serious abdominal trauma that could include damage to internal organs.

The Accommodations 

It is also important to think about the number of seats on the buses and their size. Sometimes, school districts may try to squeeze more children into each seat that is recommended. To avoid this, parents should make sure that their kids have an assigned seat on every bus. This means that each kid knows his or her seat and there isn't a temptation to try and squeeze three or more to a seat. If this happens, there isn't a seat belt for all students and this could place their safety at risk.

Impact Testing

Buses should be impacted and flip-tested to make sure that it can withstand the standard trauma of an accident or a tight curve. With these safety features in mind, do school buses make kids safer? A recent paper looked into this question.

The Results of the Literature Review

The United States is a unique country in that they offer public school bus transportation for their students. Many countries do not. A team of researchers from China looked at how the United States' school bus system works and how to implement it in China. They examined the studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which revealed a handful of papers on school bus safety. These papers compared the safety on school buses to that of other modes of transportation. The results of the papers demonstrated that the safety standards on school buses were far higher than that of the average motor vehicle. In turn, the number of injuries and accidents on school buses was less on average when compared to the injuries sustained in the average motor vehicle accident. What this means is that the drivers who operate school buses understand how to avoid accidents and even when they occur, the safety standards on the school buses helps keep the number of injuries and fatalities to a minimum. The school bus system in the United States is a model for how other countries should build their own system.

Safety First: Looking Ahead

The results of this study demonstrate a few important points for parents to remember. First, the school buses in the United States are safe. Research papers have demonstrated that the safety standards on the school buses in this country are strong. Next, they also showed that the accidents involving school buses, while scary, often do not result in the same number of injuries that a typical accident might. While this may give parents confidence in trusting their children on a school bus, there might be accidents that could lead to serious injuries in children. When this happens, the cause of the accident deserves to be investigated fully so that they can be prevented in the future.

Watch YouTube Video: School Bus Safety Training Video. This video demonstrates safety procedures for school bus drivers to follow.