Why is it that busses don't have seatbelts?

Question

Why is it that busses don't have seatbelts?

Answer 1

Most busses in Australia have seabelts.

Answer 2

I think they should have waist seatbelts...

Answer 3

The manic mechanic has explained it perfectly. It's the best answer I've seen on this topic, and there have been plenty.

Answer 4

The National Highway Transportation Administration (NHTSA), one of the most influential government agencies when it comes to public safety on roadways, has stated that current school buses are among the safest forms of transportation available.

After studying the results of crashes involving school buses, the NHTSA stated that there was no compelling reason to believe the use of seat belts on school buses should be federally mandated.

Most accidents involving school buses were either frontal or rear collisions, which means that passengers were protected by a safety feature called compartmentalization.

Compartmentalization, a concept seen frequently on commercial airplanes, involves seating passengers in rows of padded seats with cushioned back.

Answer 5

If you are referring to school buses, some do! Most of them don't though. They're not needed for a couple reasons. Transit buses are the same.

If the bus you're riding on has really high seatbacks-it won't have seatbelts (or is not required to). Those high seatbacks are called "crash barriers."

Notice how you don't have a lot of knee-legroom either?  That's because of another designed in safety feature called "compartmentalization."

The idea is the passengers are isolated from one another front-to-back (which is most likely the direction any serious force would be applied to the vehicle, such as a rear-end collision or head-on crash) by thick, padded barriers between them.

Also, it'd be hard for a passenger's body to reach any kind of high enough velocity to hit the barrier hard enough to cause injury. That's why it's a tight space front to back.

The main reasons why most buses don't have seatbelts is for evacuation purposes.

Picture this:  You're driving a bus alongside a lake.  It gets knocked into that lake by a heavy truck that doesn't stop at a stop sign (BAM!).  Now you, as a bus driver suddelny have to figure out how to unbuckle up to 72 passengers that are now hanging upside-down and injured in water. Guaranteed-the passengers pretty much won't be able to.

Or the bus stalls on a railroad crossing.  Train's coming.  Ya gonna get 35 kindergarteners unbuckled in time?  Not likely.  Most of them have a hard enough time putting the seat belts ON, much less taking them off in a panic.

Ditto if the bus catches fire.  It takes approximately 3 minutes for a full sized conventional-chassis bus to completely be engulfed in flames from end to end.  There's no way to unbuckle all those belts in that time under those panic conditions.

It's all about safety. Being able to evacuate quickly is of the utmost importance.  You can get over a nasty head wound or a broken arm.

There ain't no gettin' over a train.

Answer 6

I wish they had them but the law says they don't need them.

Answer 7

Its the politics of money.