Rob Sherman Advocacy 
Rob Sherman Advocacy Contrary to a story in today's Daily Herald, which gives the exact opposite impression, High School District 214 has agreed, after years of pressure from Rob Sherman Advocacy, to eliminate the use of school busses which don't have lap/shoulder seat belts, except for on local, neighborhood shuttle routes that take children to and from their homes before and after school. These routes operate, for the most part, at low speeds (15 to 20 mph) on relatively safely-engineered neighborhood streets where the risk of collision is quite low, the associated risk of any injury is extremely low and the risk of serious injury or death is virtually non-existent. District 214 promised that, because of the merits of the concerns raised by Rob Sherman Advocacy, they would use, whenever possible, their fleet of "activity busses," which do have lap/shoulder seat belts, for field trips and similar trips that involve the use of expressways or other high-speed and higher-risk routes. The activity busses are smaller, 14-passenger busses, which replaced 15-passenger activity vans several years ago after national reports revealed that the passenger vans were getting into a lot of roll-over crashes due to being top-heavy. All of District 214's activity busses have lap/shoulder seat belts solely because Rob Sherman Advocacy convinced the District 214 School Board to include them on the busses when they were purchased several years ago.
While lap/shoulder seat belts should be on all school busses, the school district's policy announced at last night's school board meeting accomplishes my major goal of eliminating use of school busses without lap/shoulder seat belts on higher-speed trips where crashes across the country and around the world have continually and consistently resulted in catastrophic injury and death, solely as a result of a lack of passenger safety belts.
District 214 Superintendent Dave Schuler and his two top transportation aides met with me for about an hour one month ago to go over the extensive research that I have developed over many years which prove the need for lap/shoulder seat belts on school busses on higher-speed trips. In his report to the School Board last night, Dr. Schuler demonstrated that he and his team gave careful and serious, rather than perfunctory, consideration to all of the issues that I raised. He then devised a plan that he, the School Board and I agreed met the major goals that I sought to achieve regarding school bus passenger safety while providing the best balance that the District felt it could offer at this time between passenger safety and the fiscal needs of the District.
Rob Sherman Advocacy will continue to work to get legislation adopted in Illinois and across the country to require lap/shoulder seat belts on all school busses. In the Illinois State Legislature, House Bill 381 has been approved by the Transportation and Motor Vehicles Committee by a twelve-to-one vote. The Bill now moves to the full House of Representatives for consideration. If approved there, it would go to the Senate for approval and then to the Governor to be signed into law.
That Daily Herald story, referred to, above, falsely states that I "agree with the decision to use buses that in this case lack seat belts." Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not agree with that decision and never will. What I did agree with was their decision to NOT use busses which lack seat belts on higher risk runs, such as field trips, and their decision to implement as much of my proposals regarding lap/shoulder seat belts that they felt they could at this time. That's how politics works, where you work to achieve your major and most important goals in those situations where you are unable, at the present time, to achieve all of your goals. However, I will continue to work with the School District, the State Legislature and Congress to require lap/shoulder seat belts on all school busses, all of the time, and I won't stop until that happens.