The Premier of British Columbia responded that his province will consider updated seatbelt regulations after being asked about a school bus collision that occurred near Lac La Hache last week where 14 persons were taken to hospital. He was quoted in a CTV News Article (June 24, 2024, by Andrew Weichel) as saying the lack of mandatory seatbelts on school buses was “strange”.
This is not the first time that someone has made such comments. CBC News ran a series of documentaries suggesting that Transport Canada was incompetent on the seat-belt issue. The Weichel article did some research on Transport Canada’s website and reported the following wording from the site:
According to a statement on the Transport Canada website, seatbelts can provide “added protection” for school-age children on buses – but they can also have a “negative impact” on safety if not installed or used properly.
“Making sure all children are properly secured in seatbelts is a lot more challenging in a 70-passenger school bus than in a five-passenger car or seven-passenger minivan,” the website reads.
“This is one of the reasons we allow provinces, territories and school bus operators to decide whether to install seatbelts.”
We focus again on the wording that seatbelts “…can also have a ‘negative impact’ on safety if not installed or used properly”. What does that mean? Surely we have been told for many decades now that wearing a seatbelt is an important factor in improving one’s chances of reducing injury or preventing death. So what can this “negative impact” mean? Transport Canada continues to refuse to elaborate. And the public, including a Premier of British Columbia, continually fails to understand the meaning of that phrase. Much of the seatbelt issue is rapped up in emotion and far too little understanding.
While seatbelts have been shown to be a tremendous benefit in the wide scope of prevention of injury and death one needs to understand that there are challenges with respect to what seatbelts can do in select instances. Most collisions occur in very short time frames. The velocities of human bodies in collisions must be reduced rapidly and in a controlled manner. Seatbelts help by beginning “slowing” at an earlier time and they also help in reducing the velocity of the human body in a controlled manner. Seatbelts were designed to apply their force, or load, over specific portions of the body that can accommodate those loads. For shoulder (torso) belts the webbing lies across the chest and onto the collar bone (clavicle). The lap belt lies across the pelvic region below the bony ilium. When located properly those two webbings can apply their loads relatively safely. But bad things can happen when a seatbelt is not worn properly and this is the important issue with children on school buses.
When Transport Canada wrote those words “negative impact on safety when…not used properly” they mean that there is a real challenge in placing children properly in a seatbelt and keeping them in that proper position. By far the greatest danger lies with not placing the lap belt across the lower pelvic region, below the iliac crests. If the lap belt is positioned above that bony pelvic region it can apply a dangerous load to the abdominal region that cannot accept those loads. A narrow webbing applied along the abdomen can cause major injuries to vital organs in that region. When this happens organs may be torn or ruptured requiring immediate critical care. When a school bus is involved in a major collision at a significant distance from a major hospital there is a high likelihood that children will die from seatbelt injuries when a seatbelt is not worn properly. This is part of the concern of Transport Canada, but written in a way that does not provide the public with this critical, detailed information.
The discussion of “compartmentalization” has been long with respect to school buses. Compartmentalization is a way of keeping children in local compartments where they are seated and using the surroundings of the compartment to protect children rather than using a seatbelt. It is sometimes advantageous for example to allow a child’s body to strike a broad surface such as the seatback ahead of them so that the load is distributed across a wider portion of the body. And if the seatback is relatively forgiving (“soft”) then this is a benefit. This benefit is not as great however when buses roll over or sustain a substantial lateral impact. So there are some drawbacks to compartmentalization.
Seatbelts that are similar in design to what is used by adults may be dangerous to children. But there could be restraint solutions that are similar to child seats and booster cushions that might work better for children. If such a solution exists Transport Canada has not found its application yet. And this may be nothing to do with Transport Canada being incompetent. It is not a simple fix. When we look at issues such as economy it may be expensive to produce these solutions. And while one might say that children’s safety is far more important than economy we are not understanding the issue. If we all drove million dollar race cars we would be much safer because of their advanced designs, components etc. that go into protecting race car drivers. But we can’t afford to place everyone in million dollar race cars. It is a similar reality with school buses.
Seatbelts on school buses are not as simple as many believe them to be. One of the biggest problems is that, for their own reasons, Transport Canada is not being clear enough in their explanations of those difficulties. Looking back some 50 years the introduction of seatbelts came with great resistance by some who vowed they were restricting the public’s freedom. There were many groups who searched from every negative occurrence where seatbelts did not perform properly and this negative publicity was worrisome to Transport Canada. So for such reasons Transport Canada became a proponent of secrecy, hiding instances of bad performance from persons who were working hard against seatbelt laws. If these groups of radicals had come to a less biased stance Transport Canada may have felt more comfortable publicizing the challenging circumstances where seatbelts were not functioning properly and where improvements were needed. As a result it took far too long to make improvements such as the development of child seats and booster cushions that could put children in a better orientation with respect to seatbelts that were designed for adults. And other improvements such as webbing pretensioners were far to long in their implementation into adult seatbelts.
The best that can be achieved from everyone involved is to take time to truly understand the challenges of protecting children on school buses and not just sound off because of misinformed frustration. At the same time pressure must be kept on Transport Canada to make sure they are making every effort to improve the status quo. The scenario of children flying in an uncontrolled manner through bus interiors during rollovers or angled impacts is not desirable. While in most instances concussions and fractures may not be life-threatening they are also not benign. Costs of improvements to designs of school buses are a practical roadblock but obviously children’s safety must be adequately appraised in any cost-benefit analysis.
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