Every weekday parents put their kids on school buses without even thinking about it. However, the school systems are exposing our children to an unnecessary danger. Virtually all of the school buses across the country are not equipped with seat belts.

Every year, children are needlessly killed due to the lack of seat belts. Others suffer catastrophic injuries, including paraplegia and brain damage, and require lifelong care. Many of these tragedies could be prevented by installing seat belts at a cost of only a nickel a day over the lifetime of a bus.
Bus manufacturers claim that belts are not needed because of “compartmentalization.” They claim that children will be protected in crashes because they will slam into the padded back of the seat in front of them. But compartmentalization only works in frontal impacts. Only 33% percent of school bus crashes involve frontal impacts, so that means that compartmentalization does nothing for our kids in two out of every three crashes. In rollovers and side impacts, children go flying around the bus. Sometimes they even fly out of the bus and get crushed when the bus or another vehicle rolls over them.

I am proud that my state senator, Eddie Lucio, Jr., bucked industry pressure and pushed through a law requiring all school buses purchased after 2010 to have three-point seat belts. But that’s not enough. It does nothing for our kids who will continue to ride in buses without seat belts. The average school bus is in service for 10 years, which means that some of our kids will be riding without seat belts until at least 2020.

There are companies that sell seat belt systems which can be installed into existing school buses. We should write our local school districts and demand that they give all of our children the protection of three-point seat belts.

– Michael Cowen is an attorney with The Cowen Law Group in Brownsville, Texas.