How Safe Is Your Child's School Bus?

Despite Recent Accidents,
It's the Safest Way to Go;
Biggest Changes Since 1977

By JONATHAN WELSH
April 12, 2007; Page D1

Yesterday, a school bus collided with a truck in Brampton, Ontario, critically injuring a 10-year-old boy and seriously harming another child. It was the latest in a series of dramatic crashes that have heightened many parents' fears about the safety of the yellow buses their kids ride on every day.

Thomas Built Buses' new Saf-T-Liner C2 school bus (left), along with some of the company's other current models.

In Atlanta last month, an accident involving a motor coach killed six college-baseball-team members, and in Huntsville, Ala., in November, a school-bus crash killed four teenage girls.

Some parents, such as Gwen MacMillan, a Leawood, Kan., mother of three, opt to drive their kids themselves rather than entrust them to a school bus. "I really don't understand why the buses don't have seat belts, because it seems like they would make them safer," says Ms. MacMillan, echoing many parents' concerns.

Yet accident data and interviews with transportation experts suggest school buses are actually far safer than other forms of school transport, including the family car. Indeed, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, school buses are by far the safest passenger vehicles on the road.

School-bus makers have made several upgrades in the past few years to address everything from driver visibility to handing, maneuverability and comfort. Space-age adhesives replace spot welds and rivets in certain body and chassis parts, and some new buses have Global Positioning Systems and computerized controls that function like the "black box" recorders found in aircraft. Many of the new models represent the first significant changes to school-bus design since the most recent federal safety standard for school buses took effect in 1977.

The latest buses -- with names like Saf-T-Liner C2 and Vision -- are distinctly different from those that most parents rode to school decades ago. As school districts and transport companies update their fleets, more modern-looking yellow school buses with broad, plunging windshields, sleeker bodies and intricate mirrors are appearing on many routes.

SafeGuard's school bus safety belt, designed to replace the lap belt.

Fewer than eight children die in traffic crashes in the average year while riding on school buses, according to the NHTSA. An average of 815 die using all forms of school transport, including being driven by their parents, riding bicycles and walking. Indeed, more students -- about 31 a year -- die while boarding or getting off the bus. That is why many design changes on the newest buses focus on helping the driver see students outside the bus.

The safety agency's research suggests seat belts in buses would make them even safer, saving perhaps one or two lives a year. Still, few buses come with seat belts -- mainly because few states require them. Most buses with belts have lap belts and lack the shoulder harnesses long required in cars. New Jersey, New York and Florida require buses to have lap-style seat belts, and California requires lap and shoulder belts on new buses. An increasing number of states are considering requiring lap or shoulder belts.

But putting seat belts in school buses reduces their capacity by about 17%, which could cause some children to have to take less-safe forms of transportation.

SafeGuard, a unit of IMMI that makes school-bus seats with shoulder belts, says it is trying to convince more states to require them -- in part because of their effectiveness in severe collisions, such as when buses are hit from the side by other large vehicles.

Transportation surveys show a slow decrease in the percentage of public-school students riding school buses, to about 52% last year, compared with 57% 10 years ago. Parents often wind up putting their kids in more danger by driving them to school even when they are qualified to ride the bus. There are a number of reasons: Busy parents are increasingly looking for ways to spend time with their children, and driving them to school is one way many have chosen. Parents also have long been tentative about leaving their children in someone else's care, and taking over school transport helps them feel more secure. A general increase in separation anxiety driven by everything from terrorist threats to highly publicized crimes against children makes it even harder for parents to send kids off on a large, imposing vehicle that seems to lack basic safety gear.

School buses began to appear in significant numbers in the early 1920s, with wooden bodies built on standard truck chassis. Blue Bird Corp. began building steel-body buses soon after, and bus design slowly evolved until 1977, when new federal rules resulted in stronger, more-crash-resistant buses. Decades ago, there were more than a dozen school-bus makers. Today there are only three that build them on a large scale: IC Corp., a unit of Navistar International Corp.; Thomas, which is part of DaimlerChrysler AG's Freightliner truck unit; and Blue Bird.

The Saf-T-Liner C2 offers better visibility, says its manufacturer.

School buses have long relied on what the industry calls "compartmentalization" to protect occupants in a crash. That means the close placement of well-padded, high-backed seats within the bus body is meant to keep passengers in place. James Johnson, director of strategic development for SafeGuard, says that while compartmentalization generally works well in frontal crashes, it is less effective in side impacts with trucks and other larger vehicles.

Many parents recall their own experiences riding school buses decades ago and worry that their children will have similar experiences, whether with bullying classmates or surly drivers and aides. School buses' overall image hasn't been helped by popular culture. Children's book protagonist Ida B. calls her school bus the Yellow Prison of Propulsion. Hollywood has also been unkind, from scenes of noisy, obnoxious teens in "Sixteen Candles" to a deadly accident in "The Sweet Hereafter" and the hijacking of a bus full of kids by a psychopath in "Dirty Harry."

Still, many parents are happy with the safety record of school buses and feel secure as their kids board the bus in the morning.

John Spiciarich, an apartment-building handyman who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., says he has been happy, for the most part, with the bus that takes his 9-year-old daughter to school. Still, he has had concerns.

"One time I happened to be driving behind the bus when it drove through a stop sign," he says. Mr. Spiciarich says he called the bus company, which apologized for the transgression. He also has complained periodically when he feels drivers are speeding.

He says it's important for parents to be vigilant. "When you see something you don't like, you have to get on the horn."