Ban School Buses

"Takuro Spirit" (takurospirit) 05/17/2018 at 15:37 • Filed to: None

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Seriously. Unsafe metal tubes of seatbeltless death is all they are.

I hated riding in them as a kid, and even more so now that I have kids in school. They are driven/walk to school, but every time they have a far away field trip I think of how they should stick to slow 35mph roads, and not be out there at 70+ mixing it up with traffic.

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sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:39

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Or at least give them fucking seat belts FFS

Ash78, voting early and often > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:42

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My kids both go to really small schools and transportation is always in other parents’ cars — sometimes my wife’s.

Now I’ll need to call my insurance agent about an umbrella policy because statistically that’s worse than school buses.

facw > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2018 at 15:42

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Even back when I was a kid, plenty had seat belts. Granted I’m not sure I ever saw one where the seat belts weren’t broken, but they were often present.

ttyymmnn > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:42

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The buses my boys ride are often overcrowded, and kids sit three to a seat or even in the aisle. One mother, fed up with the situation, called the police and they stopped the bus. The police wouldn’t let it go until the district sent another bus to take off the extra kids.

ttyymmnn > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2018 at 15:44

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With the emphasis on seat belts in the last what, 20 years, it’s unconscionable that buses still don’t have them. Statistics be damned. Yes, school buses are statistically safe. But when one goes tits up like this one, it’s like shaking a can of beans.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > ttyymmnn 05/17/2018 at 15:45

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Yup. Article specifically said many people were ejected.

facw > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:45

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Research seems to say that kids are already way safer on a bus than in a private car. Buses in general are a lot safer simply due to their greater size and weight. NHTSA says a child is 70 times more likely to reach school safely in a bus than in a private car. They should have belts, but the reason it’s been acceptable not to have them is because the children are safer regardless.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2018 at 15:47

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our busses had seatbelts but nobody actually wore them

HammerheadFistpunch > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:48

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I haven’t ever really squared the whole “YOU AREN’T LETTING YOUR KID GET OUT OF THEIR CARSEAT EARLIER THAN 19 ARE YOU?! YOU MUST BE A TERRIBLE PARENT!” with “Bye dear, have fun getting to school without seatbelts, airbags, padding of any kind...basically any safety at all!”

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:49

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Ban school.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > facw 05/17/2018 at 15:51

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Plus, try enforcing seat belts on a bus full of kids. I have a hard enough time getting two 16-18 year olds to buckle if they aren’t in the front seat.

Witness to that, many of the buses I rode on had belts in the first few rows, as if that was the most they could reasonably expect the driver to look after...

Matt Nichelson > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 15:55

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“Theo Ancevski said he was sitting in the fourth row from the front of the bus. “I heard a scraping sound and we toppled over the highway. A lot of people were screaming and hanging from their seatbelts,” he said outside Morristown Medical Center, where he had been treated for cuts and scrapes.”

- Per the Associated Press

Just wanted to point that out. Only so much they can do in an accident this severe though.

facw > HammerheadFistpunch 05/17/2018 at 15:56

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The safety is provided by a big, heavy, strong vehicle and by having tightly spaced, high-backed, heavily padded seats. Which is enough to make them quite safe, though for the rare event rolls a bus doesn’t provide much protection.  

sony1492 > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:00

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This is experiance from 3-4 years ago: Many new school buses have seat belts but the design is poor. They try to fit 3 to a seat so the plastic buckles grind into you body if your older than 12. The belt goes too high and isn’t great on your neck, they have adjustable plastic tabs to curb this but they are large and are uncomfortable in their own right. Furthermore the seating position is garbage so you take the belt off to try and sit sideways across the seat or really any way besides a flat 90° angle. All of these problems only get worse the longer you have to ride, when I was in school if you took the bus your ride was at least 20 minutes. Mine was 45, and many people rode for over 1.5 hours each way.

Ban public schools, and you’ve hit two birds with one stone

ttyymmnn > facw 05/17/2018 at 16:05

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But it’s sort of like aviation safety. Sure, that airplane you are riding in is ridiculously safe, based on statistics. But, when it goes bad, it goes very bad. Kids were ejected in this accident, which wouldn’t have happened if they were wearing belts. Sure, some kids won’t use them. But if they aren’t there, then nobody uses them.

crowmolly > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2018 at 16:05

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New Jersey is one of six states that require seat belts on school buses.

Enforcement and compliance are probably a big issue.

Takuro Spirit > Matt Nichelson 05/17/2018 at 16:06

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I hadn’t read that, but mainly mine was a blanket statement.

In reviewing accident scene photos and the damage to the dump truck I can’t piece together what happened unless one of them was making an illegal U-Turn in the Emergency Vehicles only median cut.

punkgoose17 > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero 05/17/2018 at 16:07

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Same

facw > sony1492 05/17/2018 at 16:07

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Can’t agree with banning public schools, they are crucial.

Agree about seats though. What was fine as a six year old was definitely unmanageable as a highschooler. It seems no one ever told my school district that kids get bigger as they age. If you are going to require belts, you almost certainly have to order buses with different seating configurations for different age groups (which of course messes with the ability to do things like take a bus of high school kids to school and then do an elementary school run with the same bus).

facw > ttyymmnn 05/17/2018 at 16:13

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Agreed (though it sounds like this bus did actually have belts). There’s obviously a cost/benefit analysis that goes into these decisions, but frankly I’d assume that belts are so cheap that it would be a no-brainer to have them everywhere. We probably don’t need to go curtain airbags or anything that complicated though. And of course the safety equipment might be different than what goes into a car. I can imagine having air conditioning could be a big help as you would no longer need to have windows that opened (and could probably make the windows out of something that would be safer in a crash).

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:17

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Transit buses are similar rolling death traps. The only reason fewer people die in accidents with those is that transit bus drivers are far more skilled than school bus drivers.

sony1492 > facw 05/17/2018 at 16:22

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It was sarcasm, but in this political climate it’s seen as an actual option.

I think there needs to be reform and restructuring but not outright removal.

Matt Nichelson > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:27

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Completely understandable. School buses have long been deathtraps imo so definitely not arguing.

It had to be something odd that happened. The AP story mentioned the dump truck company has had a lot of issues in the past with faulty equipment and an above average of vehicles down. It also mentioned them having K9' at the scene looking in the woods but didn’t know why.

ttyymmnn > facw 05/17/2018 at 16:29

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At least the seats are padded nowadays. When I rode a school bus back in the 70s, the seats were steel tubes with fiberglass benches. The other thing is that airplanes are federally regulated, while I imagine school buses are the purview of individual states, or even individual municipalities and school districts.

Takuro Spirit > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/17/2018 at 16:30

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And generally lower inter city speeds. Any time I see a city bus on the highway I cringe.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/17/2018 at 16:30

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I debate that. The reason fewer people are killed/hurt is because they never move fast enough. In my experience I prefer school bus drivers. While there are definitely some really bad ones I still say on average they’re better than transit drivers, who in my experience are pretty much universally terrible. The school bus accidents may be more catastrophic, but I see far more transit accidents.

That’s probably a regional thing though... and on that note it doesn’t help that the transit drivers take our “yield to the bus” law as license to pull out whenever the hell they want without looking.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:33

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They’re way safer than they used to be.

Takuro Spirit > Matt Nichelson 05/17/2018 at 16:34

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The mud on the back tires of the bus is what’s confusing me. For both to have offset front damage they’d have to have met at a near head on or at a 90 degree angle it seems... Or the dump truck rear ended the bus at MASSIVE speed and pushed it into the guard rail.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:39

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School buses don’t spend much time even hitting public transit bus speeds, as they usually only have passengers on short trips from residential areas (25mph speed limit) to schools (20mph speed limit). Most probably rarely exceed 35mph.

Cé hé sin > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:40

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Are school buses in America as ancient as they look?

Also, I’ve seen crashed buses before but never one where the body and chassis seem to have been held together by hope and glue.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 16:40

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1st thought: Oh shit. That’s terrible.

2nd thought: That frame looks remarkably straight...would be a good flat bed track day hauler conversion.

3rd thought: Why did I think that? Stop it brain.

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > ttyymmnn 05/17/2018 at 16:43

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That’s how our gifted bus was in elementary school (#shortbus). My Mom managed to get us a full sized bus after several “conversations”.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 05/17/2018 at 16:43

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I can’t recall the last time I was on a public transit bus (not that I ride them often anymore, but I rode them a lot for a number of years) where the driver worried me at all. Many of them get badges for how many millions of miles they’ve driven without an accident. Outside of long haul truckers, few people probably ever drive a million miles in their lifetimes.

Takuro Spirit > Cé hé sin 05/17/2018 at 16:47

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Yes. They are literally tin cans hopelessly bolted to an industrial RV type ladder frame powered by a big ‘ol stinky diesel.

Newer buses are better, but MANY of these old behemoths are on the roads shuttling our kids every weekday.

I have another burner, try to guess it! > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/17/2018 at 16:48

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I remeber my grandpa said, when he was in high school, the school couldn’t afford bus drivers, so they had seniors drive the buses.

That sounds terrifying.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > I have another burner, try to guess it! 05/17/2018 at 16:49

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Most schools, even with good pay/etc, have an incredibly hard time finding school bus drivers. It’s just not a career job, so you get people that are barely able to pass some truncated training program.

facw > ttyymmnn 05/17/2018 at 16:53

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School buses must comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=7cce7d16f082748dcdacb84ca2776887&mc=true&node=pt49.6.571&rgn=div5

There are some of the general rules, or rules regarding buses that apply, and then there are some specific requirements for school buses. For example, on seating: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=7cce7d16f082748dcdacb84ca2776887&mc=true&node=pt49.6.571&rgn=div5#se49.6.571_1222

E92M3 > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 17:00

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According to statistics, you actually put your child in more danger driving them to school in the family car, than if they had rode the bus.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/17/2018 at 17:01

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Except in the 90% of America that is rural and it is miles between stops.

Takuro Spirit > E92M3 05/17/2018 at 17:03

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True, but that’s because the OTHER parents are idiots. I trust myself more than a bus driver, and WAY more than them.

I see them at pick up and drop off... I can tell they’re an accident waiting to happen.

Stapleface > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 17:05

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My wife and I were talking about this earlier. I just can’t figure out what happened. Short of one vehicle going the wrong way, I don’t get it. The damage doesn’t seem.pissible for two vehicles travelling the same way.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 05/17/2018 at 17:09

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I thought the population of the US was becoming increasingly urban/suburban. They might be far apart, but there aren’t many children riding these routes.

ranwhenparked > Cé hé sin 05/17/2018 at 18:33

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In terms of design, yes. The construction of the actual box hasn’t changed much in 70-80 years (though the chassis and drivetrain certainly have) - somebody that rode a bus to school in the 1940s or ‘50s could ride in a brand new one and find it extremely familiar.

In terms of actual age, usually no. A lot of states and also local school districts have laws setting the maximum age of buses in service. In my state, its 12 years, so there’s nothing older than 2006 still carrying students. They get sold cheap and cut up to haul watermelons and cantaloupes during harvest season.

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 05/17/2018 at 18:35

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Yeah, I don’t get it.

I know the argument is that small children might not be able to get themselves unbuckled in time if the bus caught on fire or stalled out in front of an oncoming train, but the amount of incidents where seatbelts would prevent injury or death has to be a way larger number than the number of incidents where seatbelts might possibly be dangerous.

Also, all kids these days are raised to use seatbelts by rote at a very early age, so it isn’t like if buses got them in the ‘70s and you’d have a lot of kids unfamiliar with using them in their parents’ cars, and fast unbuckling in an emergency seems like something technology might be able to solve anyway.

Verdog ~ manual Bro, Bro - HellHawk Equipped > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 18:53

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This was a field trip, after the daily morning trips.

TX passed a mandatory seatbelt law!!! WOOOHOOO, ohh wait... we never funded it. OOOPS.

Verdog ~ manual Bro, Bro - HellHawk Equipped > Takuro Spirit 05/17/2018 at 18:54

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Yet I see them barely getting to 55-60 on an 80mph toll road daily.

Verdog ~ manual Bro, Bro - HellHawk Equipped > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2018 at 18:55

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It’s the law in TX! Ohh, wait... it was never funded.

Verdog ~ manual Bro, Bro - HellHawk Equipped > Cé hé sin 05/17/2018 at 18:56

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U-bolts, that’s about it.

Takuro Spirit > Verdog ~ manual Bro, Bro - HellHawk Equipped 05/17/2018 at 20:29

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Yes, I heard the driver and an adult chaperone were the ones listed as deceased.

DipodomysDeserti > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 05/18/2018 at 01:34

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Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

DipodomysDeserti > ttyymmnn 05/18/2018 at 01:35

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The body of the bus was ejected from the frame. Who knows whether the seatbelts ripped through the body.

DipodomysDeserti > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/18/2018 at 01:46

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Alice Cooper grew up in Phoenix, and I was really hoping our teachers would be blaring “School’s Out” during our teacher walkouts last month. Unfortunately I’m the most rock ‘n roll teacher down here in the desert. Whooped his alma mater’s ass in baseball every year I was in high school.

DipodomysDeserti > Ash78, voting early and often 05/18/2018 at 01:48

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Statistically, your wife is more likely to abuse your kids, so you’re probably better off just calling an Uber every morning.

/s

duurtlang > Cé hé sin 05/18/2018 at 04:04

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I’m much more used to buses like these. The American style seems very ancient.

With an interior like this if it’s a cheap one

or something like this if it’s a bit nicer.

Cé hé sin > duurtlang 05/18/2018 at 07:32

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The Americans use specially made school buses rather than retired rural ones though. Their usual buses are more like those. Indeed they’re often by Van Hool.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/18/2018 at 08:21

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Probably local then. I don’t think many TTC drivers would get those badges. Here it doesn’t matter a hang as far as I can tell, because once you’re an employee of the City of Toronto it’s pretty hard to get rid of you. I don’t like their driving from the inside or outside of the bus. Whereas *most* of the school buses I rode I felt perfectly safe in, and school buses generally cause me no annoyance on the road outside the natural limits of the vehicle.

Besides that, like senior citizens, it’s not just how many accidents they’ve been in but rather how many they’ve caused. That IS speculation, but based on their behaviour I see every day... yeah...

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/18/2018 at 08:30

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Wait, every school has it’s own buses where you are? Here it’s a contract service, and there’s really only 2-3 companies to choose from. As far as truncated training programs go, to be allowed to drive a school bus in Ontario you actually require more training than it takes to drive a city bus or coach. You go through extra training, you’re more likely to stay longer. Many of the drivers I saw when I was in school lasted at least 5-8 years.

Ash78, voting early and often > DipodomysDeserti 05/18/2018 at 08:46

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Touche!

I mean...BAD TOUCHE! NO!

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 05/18/2018 at 11:31

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The school districts run/own/employ buses/drivers in the US. They have lower training requirements than a transit bus driver, which requires a class of license just short of a long haul trucker.

Although school buses sometimes go a fair distance, they don’t usually go very far with passengers except on field trips, which is almost always when we hear about these crazy accidents.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/18/2018 at 11:47

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Yeah, that explains it. Looks like our requirements are flipped, iirc with bus drivers of any kind above truckers.

Which come to think of it, could be a reason our truckers suck balls

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > Takuro Spirit 05/23/2018 at 16:23

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And completely screwing up my commute, “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO STOP EVERY 20 GOD DAMN FEET!? LITTLE JOHNNY WOULDN’T BE SUCH A TUBBY SHITHEAD IF HE MAYBE WALKED A FEW YARDS EVERY DAY!”