this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 125 points 9 months ago (9 children)

The reason the bus driver has a seat belt and the kids don't is because the kids have a padded seat back in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. The bus driver has nothing but glass and the open road in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. And seat belts help protect the bus driver from the airbags as they deploy from the steering wheel which have been known to deploy so forcefully that if you're not wearing a seat belt they can kill you, and even in some extreme circumstances completely decapitate you.

Also as someone else pointed out the kids could get trapped in their seats in the event of a fire. The bus driver has a little seat belt cutting tool available to them, but in a fire they might not have time to cut 72 seat belts to free all of the kids on a big bus.

You might ask, well what if the bus rolls? It's pretty unlikely that the bus would roll because bus drivers are trained pretty extensively and have to go through periodic medical exams and driving exams to make sure they're capable of doing the job safely. Even if the bus were in a situation where it might roll, it's very bottom heavy so it would take quite a lot to get it to tip over.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 55 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Other countries have seatbelts on school buses, so it's not exactly some cut and dry question.
It's not even the case in all US states.

The NTSB recommends that we start enforcing seat belts on school buses.
https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/safety-topics/Pages/schoolbuses.aspx

They agree with what you said, but disagree that the risk of being trapped outweighs the risk of being fired face first into a seat back.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

As a school bus driver, I can say there is ZERO chance of being able to make the kids actually wear the seat belts.

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[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago (2 children)

An interesting stat about school buses is that over the last 20 years or so, there has been a roughly equal number of bus driver deaths and passenger deaths. Since a school bus typically carries a much larger number of passengers (as many as 70 or more) than drivers (1), this means that the risk of death for the driver is far higher than that for the passengers (although exactly how much riskier it is is difficult to determine from the published data).

Another interesting safety feature of school buses is that the bus bodies are clipped to the chassis rails rather than being bolted or welded to them and thus are held in place solely by friction. This is so that the bus body can slide forward a couple of feet along the rails in the event of a head-on collision, which greatly reduces the deceleration forces experienced by the passengers (this crash test video shows the phenomenon clearly). This does not help the driver much either as they're sliding forward into the engine compartment or into the oncoming vehicle in the case of flat-front buses.

It’s pretty unlikely that the bus would roll

Yeah, buses really aren't going to roll unless they get hit hard on the side by an equally-large vehicle traveling at a high speed - or unless they run afoul of some mythbusters.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

The mythbusters clip about the bus is one of my favorites, because it showed just how hard it is to tip over a bus.

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[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (15 children)

The fire stuff makes some degree of sense but the "padded seat" thing doesn't. 1) they aren't very padded in the back, and 2) by that logic people wouldn't need to wear seatbelts if they sat in a back seat in any car.

[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 33 points 9 months ago

The other advantage of buses is that they have a lot of inertia due to their mass. The most likely thing for them to hit is a car and most likely because that car made a mistake. The bus can easily push a car out of the way without losing too much velocity. The same is not true of your average civilian vehicle.

[–] Perfide@reddthat.com 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
  1. by that logic people wouldn't need to wear seatbelts if they sat in a back seat in any car.

That logic is the exact reason in some places it is(was? My info is a few years old.) legal for adults in the back seat to not wear a seat belt. Not saying I agree with the logic, but that actually is the case in some places.

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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"padded seat back in front"

I haven't had to take a school bus in 20 years but from what I remember there isn't much padding over the frame that goes around the back so I wouldn't want to get that in my face in a crash!

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago

I was a chaperone on a school trip last year, and the bus had about 3" of foam padding over the frame and just vinyl on the seat back. Plus the sides of the bus were just bare aluminum with screws and sharp corners.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I just want to point out that decapitation, in a medical sense, doesn't necessarily mean the head is removed from the body. You can be internally decapitated.

[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago
[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Like...brain stem shearing? Yuck.

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Not necessarily. There are stories of horsemen getting bucked while staying in the saddle and having to hold their head up by the hair while riding to medical attention. They didn't become quadriplegic but the internal decapitation lost them control of their neck.

Not too sure why it isn't considered a broken neck though

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 11 points 9 months ago

If you dislocate your elbow, you didn't break a bone, the joint just came unhinged.
Your spine is a set of joints.
An internal decapitation is basically a "dislocated skull".

It's only because we have a special word for "head came off" that it's a bit mixed up.

Colloquially, you probably could call it a broken neck, since I don't know if anyone particularly cares if the spinal nerve damage was because bone fractured or just came loose, outside of a medical professional.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 7 points 9 months ago

There are stories of horsemen getting bucked while staying in the saddle and having to hold their head up by the hair while riding to medical attention

Fuck I was not prepared for that horrifying of a read at 3pm on Thursday

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

School bus drivers have more oversight than police huh?

Hair stylists have more oversight than police.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

School bus drivers are going under significantly less training and requirements in my affluent DC suburb, since Covid at least.

They don’t get paid shit and they’re privatizing the school busses :(

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The privatizing shit is ludicrous. A lot of districts in my area have gone that route, and they always end up paying more per student-mile while getting the kids transported in older buses by shittier drivers who get DUIs and failed drug tests far more often. They always sell it as allowing private enterprise to "innovate", but there's no innovation to be had in the world of school buses. No matter who does it, you have to buy or lease buses, maintain them (or not, as the case may be), and hire drivers and a couple people to handle the logistics.

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[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Iirc, Mythbuster tried to roll a bus and couldn't.

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[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Nah it's so kids don't get trapped in a fire

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 40 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Nope, it's literally a cost benefit analysis.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/document/seat-belts-large-school-buses

NTSB recommends seatbelts, NHTSA says they would save lives, but the cost or complexity might reduce usage, and school buses are safer than being dropped off at school, so the cost isn't justified.

[–] ButtDrugs@lemm.ee 40 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I mean, this is showing the school bus fatalities are insanely low (just 5 total in 37 years in AL) and we should instead use funding to make the more dangerous parts of student transportation safer. This seems like using data to make sure we are making informed choices that will actually increase safety for a larger number of kids instead of wasting resources.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 21 points 9 months ago (7 children)

That is precisely what it is.
It's literally a cost benefit analysis showing that while seatbelts make riders safer, they aren't thought to be the best way to make things as safe as possible.

It's not about fire safety.

[–] ButtDrugs@lemm.ee 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ok yeah that makes sense to me. Just when I heard it was because of a "cost benefit analysis " I think of some bigwigs saying "fuck them kids it's too expensive to keep them alive", vs the somewhat surprising reality here. Thanks for sharing.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's a shame that the phrase cost benefit analysis has gotten a bad reputation.

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[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 7 points 9 months ago

The "better spend resources elsewhere" part makes sense. The cost side feels a little dishonest, beacuse when large enough government bodies mandate safety rules, suppliers pick up a lot of the cost, under "the cost of doing business".

[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Usually seat belts are made to be ejected by a simple button and spring mechanism. We perfected the technology decades ago.

[–] DadVolante@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Cool. Now try to get a 1rst grader to use one when it's panicking

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[–] rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works 11 points 9 months ago

The CBC's "The Fifth Estate" did a whole show about this.

https://youtu.be/bcnSpQdeG3M?si=kEaXz_CfU8nqXfJq

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People are doing all kinds of justifications to why school buses don't have seatbelts, but why don't regular public transportation buses have seatbelts?

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[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I assumed it was kids cant beat each other with them

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It’s because in the event of an emergency it is harder to get them out

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Indeed, much easier to pick their mangled bodies off the street.

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[–] Bread@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Makes you wonder why the driver gets a seatbelt when the kids do not.

[–] BB69@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Because an adult should know how to unbuckle themselves in a rollover accident.

And the driver is at a different impact point

[–] Bread@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

In a rollover accident, you also risk kids getting tossed around like clothes in a dryer and ejected from the vehicle if the windows are open or break. I can't say I think that is a better option. It is a risk vs reward scenario here. In a fire you can get out easier, in a rollover, you turn the bus into a drink mixer if it is going fast enough into the roll.

[–] BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 9 months ago

Buses are built so they are very unlikely to roll. If they do, everyone was probably screwed anyway.

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[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

The back of the seat if front of the students is higher and softer than the steering wheel in front of the driver.
As unfortunate as it sounds, in most accidents kids can't bounce around much and mostly hit something soft enough to keep injuries minor or at least nonfatal.

For a long time the numbers worked out that that was enough for most bus accidents to protect students, and that seatbelt costs would be better spent increasing safety at pickup and dropoff locations and increasing bus ridership numbers, since even without seatbelts a school bus is radically safer than being driven to school or walking in most places.

More recently, the numbers have started to say we should invest in seatbelts and making pedestrian routes to schools safer, since those would now make a more significant impact.

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