Proposal to Mandate Seat Belts on Buses Comes Just in Time for Sherman Anniversary

Proposal to Mandate Seat Belts on Buses Comes Just in Time for Sherman Anniversary

This month marks two years since the tragic bus accident in Sherman, Texas in 2008 that killed 15 passengers.  Just in time to mark the anniversary, comes a proposal by the Department of Transportation to make seat belts mandatory on all motor coaches.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the proposal which, for the first time, would require new buses to come with lap shoulder seatbelts on all buses.  All buses will not come under the new rule, and it will not include city transit buses or school buses.  Only large tour buses having a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 26,000 pounds, with at least 16 passenger seats and two rows of forward facing seats behind the driver, would be included under the new rules. 

That still doesn't take it as far as Texas bus accident lawyers would like, but it is a small step forward.  The fact is that many deadly bus accidents are caused outside city limits and urban areas, and these are the buses that the rule will target.

The rule comes in response to long-standing recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandate seatbelts on buses.  The NHTSA's failure to do so was blamed for the multiple fatalities in a deadly Utah accident in 2008, when a bus went down an embankment and just about every passenger on the bus, except the driver and another man, were ejected from their seats.

17 people died when a bus, carrying a group of Vietnamese Catholics on their way to a pilgrimage, went off a highway overpass bridge and crashed in Sherman on August 8, 2008.  The accident was traced to a blown tire, and the charter company had a history of bus safety violations.  Could seatbelts on the bus have prevented the accident?  No. However, the fact is that many of those passengers would likely have been saved, or at least have suffered less serious injuries, if they had been safely secured in their seats.

According to federal data, approximately 2/3^rd of bus accidents over the past decade have been single vehicle accidents where the bus rolled over.  Out of the fatalities in these accidents, 75% were ejected from their seats.  These were deaths that could have been prevented if these buses had seatbelts.