Opinion: School buses stand up to numbers crunch

Parents, guardians and grandparents are silently asking themselves, “Should I drive my child to school, let him walk or ride a bike … or put him on a school bus?”

These well-intentioned people will often let their hearts, not their heads, make the final decision.

I run into people all the time who say, “I won’t let my grandson ride the school bus because they just are not safe. Did you see the 6 p.m. news last night?” Or “Why don’t they have seat belts on school buses like we have in our cars?”

For the past 14 years I have been researching the facts about transporting a child on a yellow school bus.

Here are the facts.

The numbers

There are 50 million children in private and public school in the United States. Approximately half of these students are transported on yellow school buses each day.

Thus, school buses travel 4.3 billion miles each school year with 100 million boardings and deboardings each day.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, school buses are only involved in .03 percent of vehicular crashes that involve a fatality.

Specifically, there are approximately 20 to 25 people who lose their lives each year as a result of a school bus accident.

Based on those facts, the yellow school bus is the safest vehicle on the road in the United States.

Why don’t you know that? Well, the only time you will hear about school buses is when one is rolled over in a ditch and footage airs on the 6 p.m. news. Media is not excited about reporting another safe trip.

Seat belts

And what about those seat belts? Four years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted exhaustive testing on both lap belts – the kind on airplanes – and lap-shoulder belts – the three point harness system mandated on automobiles.

The lap belt had two liabilities. In a 30 mph rear impact test, the lap belts either resulted in severe abdominal or spine injuries and/or caused the child to “submarine” under the seat in front of him.

The lap-shoulder belts certainly proved to be much safer than the lap belts but resulted in minimal safety advantages. NHTSA concluded its findings with this statement: “Widespread use of the lap-shoulder harness may result in saving one life per year.”

And one life is worth it all. Maybe.

The cost of putting lap-shoulder belts on all school buses may actually increase fatalities and injuries of our children. Follow this reasoning.

Buses vs. books

Seat belts will increase the cost of a school bus, right now, by about $8,000. If your child’s school bus operation has 50 buses, that is an increase of $400,000 for pupil transportation.

If a school district has to choose between books or buses, buses always lose.

Therefore, the cost of providing lap-shoulder belts will result in fewer buses and fewer buses mean more of our children will go to school in private cars, walk or ride a bicycle.

And here are the mind-numbing numbers of this column:

It is statistically 100 times safer to put a child on a yellow school bus than it is to drive your child to school. It is statistically 50 times safer to provide a yellow school bus ride than it is to allow your child to walk or ride a bike to school.

We live our lives according to the numbers.

Think about it. If you went to the airport tomorrow and the agent behind the counter, after handing you a boarding pass, said, “Good luck,” you may pause and say, “Pardon me, ‘good luck,’ what does that mean?”

If the agent said, “Well, 35 percent of our flights have crashed in the last year,” you probably will ask for a refund and get out the road atlas.

My appeal is simply for the public to judge the safety of yellow school bus transportation on the numbers, not the latest video footage on the 6 p.m. news.

Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting. He can be reached at execenrichment@aol.com.

Further Study

Cal LeMon is the author of “Unreported Miracles: What You Probably Do Not Know About Your Child’s School Bus.” His published research has been cited by the National Education Association.