Chapter 88 Question 079

Why are seat belts required on private car seats but not on school buses? (Carol Scazela, Tonvi Mehra, Jim Sheahan, Sachin Dass) With the exception of New Hampshire (where the state motto is: Give me liberty or give me death!), every state in the United States requires drivers and passengers to wear seat belts.But only four states (New York, New Jersey, Florida and California) require seat belts on all new school buses.Why is there such a difference? According to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Administration, wearing a seat belt in a car saves 1.5 million dollars a year.Twenty thousand lives.Considering that more than 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the United States every year, one.Twenty thousand is a considerable figure.Among these deaths, one-eighth are teenagers under the age of 19 who die more than 5,000 a year, but the proportion of children who died in school bus accidents is extremely low 1999︱2000 , the average number of deaths per year is only 10.two people.A 2002 paper by the National Research Council found that walking, biking and taking a private car to school is riskier than taking a school bus.

Liz of the National Transportation Safety Administration.With tightly packed seats and high, shock-absorbing backrests, school buses protect children like eggs in an egg crate, Nebelert said.It is the safest means of road transportation.The cost of adding seat belts to a typical school bus is estimated to be around $1,800.Evidence shows that more lives could be saved if the same amount of money was spent on improving the safety of pedestrian crossings near school bus platforms.