The Washington Senate Transportation Committee is wrestling with the question of whether school buses in Washington should have seat belts.
A new bill would require public and private school districts to buy buses with seat belts for each passenger when they replace their current buses. State officials estimate the cost to districts would be nearly $22 million this biennium.
At a hearing Tuesday afternoon, Allan Jones, a former school bus driver who also worked in the transportation division of the state school superintendent’s office, spoke in favor.
Jones said he often fielded questions from parents and school districts about why buses didn’t have seat belts for kids. The answer is always been it costs too much. That is, Jones says, until about eight years ago, when the technology finally became affordable.
“It no longer reduced the capacity of a school bus so the putting a lap-shoulder belt on the bus didn’t mean that you would have to hire more drivers and buy more buses," Jones said. "So, at that point, that was the last thing that I had as an argument about why we shouldn’t have belts on buses.”
Another former driver, Brian Lange, testified that he too supports the idea. But, he says, it brings some challenges. Getting kids to buckle up and keeping them in their belts is a challenge.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve had to pull over because Johnny decided the straps were a little too tight and unbuckled his three-point harness and we went 10 miles down the road before one of the other students noticed and either said something or did it himself and somebody else noticed,” Lange said.
He says it will be difficult for drivers to see if smaller children are buckled in.