In the fall of 1982, a Hastings public school bus was hit from the side by a potato truck. Multiple children were injured and sent to the hospital. Not only did this incident affect Minnesotans of the area, but this sad accident personally affected my mother and her cousin as well. They were headed to school on a beautiful fall day when the series of unfortunate events occurred in tandem. The bus driver wasn’t paying attention and blew through a stop sign generating immediate terror and consequences. My mother was thrown into the metal seat in front of her. She recalled the metal seat being “hard and cool” to her face after they made quick, sudden contact. To my mother’s amazement, she walked away with only a couple of scratches and bruises. For David, the experience of the accident was entirely different as he was ejected from his seat and crash-landed in the front of the bus. He was barely conscious and had to be airlifted to the hospital that day. Are these graphic, yet preventable images of human suffering and distress what we want to be thinking as we watch our children board that unsafe yellow vehicle? The sound of children screaming as an accident is set in motion? No? Well, let's change one of today’s significant flaws in civilized society. I believe that buses should have seat belts to be worn by passengers. Today, I'll be explaining the context of my argument, exploring the potential cost to implementing my argument, and solidifying the only reasonable solution to this timely safety issue.

To extrapolate the context that arises from busses without seatbelts, the best lens to start with is news media. After listening or reading news media for several years on bus crashes, certain journalistic reporting styles are frequently repeated.  For example, after a bus crash occurs there is usually a headline that pops up us giving brief information as viewers watch the news. The information they do provide is noteworthy because most of the time they report on the condition that the passengers are in, but give no details on the bus driver’s health. What about the bus driver? When the statistics on the injuries and fatalities are presented, the bus driver often seems to be the one spared from this list. It is the belief behind today’s raised argument that draws a correlation between the bus driver’s high survivability rate and the enforcement of the bus driver’s seat belt use. If they make the experienced bus driver wear a seatbelt, why wouldn't they make the passengers were them as well? There has been some acknowledgment of this faulty logic. A New York Times article entitled “Are Seat Belts Required on School Buses?’’ by Winnie Hu reported on May 23, 2018, stated that a federal transportation panel passed a recommendation to states “that all new large buses be equipped with both lap and shoulder seat belts,’’ (New York Times).  The article also goes on to note that “Eight states already passed legislation, requiring that seat belts be installed on school buses according to the National Conference of State Legislatures,’’ (New York Times). Even though these implemented laws seem to be applicable solutions to our perplexing problem, there has still been the debate on if seat belts do ensure safety on school buses. Though the data of this debate is mostly in the early stages and very slim in sample size, school buses are considered to be safe. Despite that statement, people miss the point of potentially cracking down on the between four and six children who die each year from school vehicle accidents. Now that today’s argument has been given context and the real focus of who is being fought for has been identified, it is time to examine the cost of belting up for the future.

One factor to implementing seatbelts on buses which deters many lawmakers is the cost of such a significant change for that many bus seats. According to the National Association of Pupil Transportation, outfitting school buses with seat belts comes with a price tag that ranges from $7,000 to $11,000 per vehicle. After such a financial hit, it might sound concerning to busing companies. However, the website Bussboss argues that most buses stay within the system for at least fifteen years which makes it seem less extreme of a change. The school’s budget would be better off spent on safety precautions. Driver training, newer buses, and updated equipment (seat belts) are just several examples of safety precautions. The hardware itself may not mean a lot to you, but the precious cargo of human life it protects should. “You can’t put a price tag on someone’s life,” said National Conference of State Legislatures spokesperson Maureen Vogel in a March 30, 2017, Ajc article named “Should School Buses Have Seat Belts?”. She continued saying “You’d never be able to tell a mother who’s lost a child, ‘Sorry, seat belts were too expensive.’ ” Another potential cost for the implementation of seat belts on busses would be the enforcement of riders wearing them. With the bus driver preoccupied with the roadway, riders are likely to go unchecked whether they whether they belt up or not.  A simple fix would be to hire a safety official for each bus to actively enforce belting. Changing the safety standards of a massive vehicle as a bus comes with a price tag and enforcement, but human life is priceless. Our final stop is acknowledging the obvious solution in the room before it becomes genuinely too late: seat belt bus passengers.

The repetition of news stories involving bus crashes and loss of life almost becomes monotonous when passengers aren’t properly belted. According to Pierce County Herald Newspaper on March 26, 2019, two adults and seven students were transported to the hospital sustaining minor injuries when an Ellsworth Bus was rear-ended after dropping a student off. They weren’t wearing seatbelts. Similarly, in a NBC News report titled “Driver in Deadly Charter Bus Crash in Virginia Charged with Manslaughter” by Elisha Fieldstadt on March 19, 2019, around 5:22 am, a Virginia Charter bus drove off the side of an exit ramp on Intersection 95 in Pierce George County. This crash left two dead and injured multiple. They weren’t wearing seatbelts. Do you see the trend? Busses without seat belts is an issue we can fight. If we place seatbelts on each bus, think of how many lives we could save. Also, think of how much reassurance we could give back to our parents. The solution has been laid out crystal clear almost as clear as the reflection on the seat belt as it is clicked into place. It is time to reflect on the major points made in today’s argument and realize we as a society have some changing to do.

This debate has been unable to jump the final hurdle for full implementation, but if we look at the lives we can save, I feel we can draw in lawmakers. The price tag and difficulty of enforcement are significant counterpoints to this argument, but schools want to give their money for the enforcement of safety precautions to ensure parental confidence that the school is capable of watching over their children. Our kind is being killed on our watch. This rising issue is a definite wakeup call before you lose someone close to you. My mother's cousin almost died because of this prevalent. Let’s not turn that ‘’almost’’ into a ‘’was’’ and solve this problem that endangers fellow citizens every day the bus drives by without passenger seat belts.