Something I've thought about before, and which Pirate asked about on the way to the school bus stop this morning. Most states these days have mandatory seat-belt laws for everyone. Here in New Hampshire, seat belt use is recommended for everyone, but still mandatory for children (up to age 18, actually). You can be cited and fined for not having a seat belt on your child.
So how come school buses don't have seat belts?
On a slightly different subject, NPR reported on the way back from the bus stop that medical insurers in New Hampshire are considering not paying hospitals to treat conditions caused by medical errors.
Sure makes sense to me... if I'm a mechanic, and I'm working on your car, and I fuck something up that was fine when you brought the car in, you should expect it to get fixed on my dime, not yours. Why should a hospital be any different?
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1. The marginal safety gain will be small. School buses are one of the safest modes of transport on the road, with the injury and death rate per passenger-mile much smaller than that of private automobiles transporting children to school.
2. Cost. Equipping buses with belts is gonna cost money that some school districts can't afford. Coupled with (1.) above, the marginal lives saved per dollar spent will not be worth it.
3. Expected poor compliance. Herding school children is like herding cats. Can you picture getting an entire bus full of them to fasten their seat belts?
4. The time involved in making sure everyone is belted in before the bus moves will result in unacceptable delays in already tight schedules. Not only that, other road users are prohibited from passing the stopped school bus, thus creating delays for other road users.
5. The belts and buckles will make nice weapons for the kids to hit each other in the head with.
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"You wear your seatbelt in your parents' car, right?"
"Uh, yeah ..."
"Then you can wear it on my bus."
I don't see much to #4. Typically only a few kids get on and off at each stop, and it's not like they all have to line up to fasten and undo their seat belts. That operation parallelizes insanely well.
#5 ... well, there's a point, but isn't the driver supposed to keep the kids from fighting on the bus anyway? Far as I've heard, if your kid starts fights on the bus more than about once or twice, the bus company will tell you, "Your kid's not riding the bus any more, take him to school yourself."
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Given how few car drivers payed attention to my cross over lights (some ignored me with my stop sign, driving around me.
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