On New Buses, It Will Be ‘Buckle Up’

By TANYA MOHN
 

A new seat belt rule is meant to make buses safer than ever.
 
The rule will require lap and shoulder seat belts for every passenger and driver seat on newly manufactured motorcoaches and other large buses, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced last week.
 
The rule, which must be implemented by November 2016, is expected to significantly reduce the risk of death and serious injury in frontal crashes and the risk of occupant ejection in rollover crashes, the agency said.
 
“While travel on motorcoaches is overall a safe form of transportation, when accidents do occur, there is the potential for a greater number of deaths and serious injuries due to the number of occupants and high speeds at which the vehicles are traveling,” David Strickland, the agency’s administrator, said in a statement.
 
On average, 21 motorcoach and large bus occupants are killed and 7,934 are injured in crashes each year, according to government data; with seat belts, fatalities could be reduced by up to 44 percent and the number of moderate to severe injuries by up to 45 percent.
 
Some buses, like school and transit buses are exempt. So are existing buses.
 
Several companies have already begun voluntarily purchasing buses that include seat belts. Megabus, for example, has equipped every bus purchased since 2006 with three-point lap/shoulder seat belts, the company said.
 
In a telephone interview, Bella Dinh-Zarr, the North American director of Make Roads Safe and director of road safety for the FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society — nonprofit groups that work for safer roads worldwide — called the new requirement an important one.
 
“The safety community has advocated for seat belts in buses for decades,” but there has been a general perception that large buses are safer because they are so much bigger than other vehicles, Dr. Dinh-Zarr said. “This ruling really helps cement the fact that no matter what type of transportation, seat belts are important.”
 
Consumers can check the safety records of carriers through the Department of Transportation’s search tool, or by using its SaferBus mobile application.