2y ago

An elementary student died and 23 others injured after their Ohio school bus was hit on first day of class

www.cnn.com

An elementary student died and 23 others injured after their Ohio school bus was hit on first day of class | CNN

An elementary student was killed and 23 other students were injured – including one with life-threatening injuries – after their school bus was hit by a minivan and overturned on the first day of school.

The accident occurred on state Route 41 in German Township, Ohio, on Tuesday morning, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said in a news release.

40 comments

The way people treat school buses on the road is despicable. Every illegal pass of a stopped school bus should be punished far more harshly, if someone can't stop for a bus filled with kids they don't deserve to be on the road at all.
- I'm a school bus driver and last year someone drove around my bus on the left while my 8-ways were on and the stop sign was out and hit a student who was crossing the street after exiting the bus, bumping her in the shoulder and running over her foot. I got the plate number but the cops did nothing with it. Passing the bus in the opposite direction is something I even expect these days (although it's still illegal of course) since people are too busy looking at their phones to pay attention, but going around a lit-up bus in the same direction means seeing a stopped school bus and then consciously deciding "fuck them kids".
  Fortunately, the girl was not hurt somehow, but it still made me want to fuck that driver up bad.
  
  How the fuck did the cops do that nothing???
  
  Horrible to hear about the incident and the fact that the police did not care. In my mind school buses should be the most protected vehicles on the road, treated the same way as first responders.
So sad
I bet the minivan driver was texting.
- I'm a school bus driver and I used to use my high vantage point to count how many passing drivers were looking at their phones instead of ahead of them, and I estimated that it was about 1 in 4. I even had a cop pass me while I had my lights on and kids were about the cross - he was face down in his phone and driving with one hand.
  I stopped counting for the sake of my mental health. I truly don't understand why I don't see multiple collisions a day because of this shit.
  
  Oh don't you know? Cops are trained in the use of technology while driving so it's perfectly safe for them to be buried in their phones or that fucking laptop they have mounted on their center console while running red lights at 80 mph without their sirens on. Don't even worry about it.
- My first thought as well. Why else would they be over the line?
Terrible :(
Old and busted: School Shootings
New hot stuff: School Bus Driving!
Fucking carbrains.
- Oh- no, I don't think the minivan was self driving.
Vehicles are required to have seatbelts... Except school busses. Because F you, kids.
- Buses are not required to have seatbelts because they have a far greater mass than a car, making it harder to, you know, fling people out of a window/into the seat in front of them when a crash occurs, which is what seatbelts are designed to prevent. Oh, and you really think a single bus driver can make 20-30 kids keep their seatbelts on during the ride to school? This is mission control, please come back to Earth.
  
  It's the culture. My kids school in Taiwan has a full bus of kids with their seatbelts on as soon as they get in.
  
  Easily. Just hit a curb kids ain’t that dumb.
  
  You're arguing that it's better not to have seatbelts because the driver can't guarantee that 100% of the students will buckle up? That's hilarious.
  Semis have a greater mass than a bus, yet the driver and passenger both have seat belts. Other countries put seat belts on their busses. I'd love to see some data backing up your argument.
  
  Yet, the driver has a seatbelt. Greater mass means a greater kinetic momentum. Lol, the irony of your username.
- Do you know why?
  Full shoulder belts are impractical in full sized school busses, and lap belts have proven to be as harmful as they are helpful. Smaller van-type busses are typically equipped with shoulder belts now, because they are smaller and occupants are more likely to be ejected from a seat in an impact.
  Full size busses are designed to prevent this, and are quite safe. Seat belts have been used in full sized busses in the past, and they were found to be more likely to cause harm by either entrapping a passenger or causing direct damage to the hips, upper legs, lower spine, and abdominal organs. Seat belt entrapment has been considered as a possible factor in the deaths of passengers killed in busses that caught fire.
  This is still very much a controversial topic. There are certainly instances where seatbelts may have prevented deaths and injuries, but by and large, school busses are one of the safest modes of transportation on the road in the United States. Numerous studies have been done on this subject. Almost any time a bus accident happens that gets significant coverage, people start demanding answers about "why didn't that bus have any seatbelts?", and the results are pretty much the same every time: because in the long run, they don't improve anything. Everything else about a school bus is designed to protect the occupants.
  I recommend really looking into this subject yourself. It seems counterintuitive, but when you see the data for yourself, it makes sense.
  
  https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/safety-topics/Pages/schoolbuses.aspx
  NTSB seems to think seatbelts would be an upgrade to just having compartmentalization and provide children with better internal safety. Thanks for making me look into it!
  
  Sounds more like a lot of effort went into fabricating excuses to not make that expense, excuses which are directly contradicted by the National Transportation Safety Board:
  School buses use a unique technology called compartmentalization—a passive occupant protection system to protect children in crash. School bus seats are made with an energy-absorbing steel inner structure and high, padded seat backs, and are secured to the school bus floor. Students are protected within the seating compartment much like eggs in a carton. Through our crash investigations, we have found that, compartmentalization alone is not enough to prevent all injuries and that for some of the children involved, a seat belt could have lessened their injuries or even saved their lives.
  As a result of our school bus crash investigations, we believe—and have recommended—that, when investing in new school buses, the purchased vehicles should provide children with the best protection available, which includes lap/shoulder seat belts.
- This is strange, I distinctly remember school buses have seatbelts when I was on it. Has things changed this much?
- Think for a minute and you might realize why seatbelts won't work on a school bus.
  
  No, sorry. I’m going to need you to explain it, if the reason is other than money.
  
  When we say school bus it's an "everyone has a seat and is sat down" scenario.
  With that established, I'm going to tell you that pretty much every EU country that runs school buses of that scenario does have seatbelts. We definitely do in the UK.
  It clearly is possible. I'm not saying that the busses aren't otherwise built for safety in every way like many other commenters are saying, and maybe they wouldn't even provide extra benefit (which I doubt, but I see some commenters are citing studies), but it is definitely possible to add and realistic for kids to use seatbelts.

40 comments