The High School District 214 School Board has directed the Purchasing Department to solicit bids for 23 busses with 3-point seat belts, following a presentation that I made to the Board last Thursday.
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Last Thursday, I made a return visit to the District 214 School Board to update the members of the Board of Education on the seat belt issue. District 214 covers many of the northwest suburbs of Chicago, including the Cook County portion of Buffalo Grove, where I live. Click here to read about District 214.
I told the members of the school board that, since the last time I spoke to them a month ago, three more children who had been riding a school bus died, solely because there were no seat belts on their school bus. This was the incident out of Mountainburg, Arkansas, that I told you about in the June 14th edition of Liberal News and Commentary.
Here are some more of the things that I told them: I explained that the issue was truly critical because children have no protection from head injuries, abdominal injuries and crushing injuries when they ride "loose in the box." The reason that the issue is critical is that children are being severely and critically injured and killed in school bus crashes, solely because they don't have 3-point seat belts to protect them from flying through the air and slamming into something really hard when their bus is involved in a wreck. Some studies contend that children are safer without seat belts when riding school busses than they would be if they were wearing seat belts. Those studies, however, are an industry scam, because they compare not using a seat belt versus use of a 2-point seat belt. The studies referred to by Laidlaw School Bus refer to two-point seat belts (at the end of the second paragraph of the above link). Those studies compare the effects of slamming one's whole body into the seat back in front of a child, versus a child slamming his head on the top of the seat back in front of him because he was restrained in a 2-point seat belt. All that those studies prove is that TWO-point seat belts are worse than nothing at all, but a THREE-point seat belt, where no part of your body slams into the seat back in front of you, is infinitely better than no seat belt, where your whole body gets slammed about and there's no telling which part of you (head, neck, gut) is going to absorb a horrific impact.
I pointed out to the school board that the District 214 contract with its service provider for bussing stipulates that, for quality of service, all school busses are to be no more than ten years old. Based on that, I urged the school board to require that all new busses acquired for use in the district be equipped with 3-point seat belts for all passengers. Even if the school board was unwilling to spend the money to retro-fit existing busses, the board should at least start the process of converting their fleet to one in which all seats will be equipped with 3-point seat belts within ten years.
The Board President, Mimi Cooper, was very polite and thanked me for my presentation. (The way a government board meeting works, such as a school board, village board or city council meeting, is that citizens are given an opportunity to present information to the board. Engaging in a debate is not part of the deal. If the members of the government body wish to respond or to question the presenter, they may, but this is not the time for a debate on the issue. If any member of the board feels that the subject should be explored further, the board member can request that the issue be placed on the agenda of a future board meeting as a discussion item. That method also ensures that there is proper notice to the public that an issue of interest is up for discussion by the board, so anyone else with an interest in the subject matter can attend and participate. All that is to say that President Cooper's response was an appropriate one. It was not a brush off and should not be interpreted as such.)
Later in that same school board meeting, the board considered Discussion Item 2001-121, the purchase of twenty-three 14-passenger activity busses over the next three years, with the purchase of eight of those busses for the 2001-2002 school year. A District 214 information sheet describes "activity bus" as an alternative means of transportation that meets all federal safety requirements for school busses. The busses are painted white, can be driven by someone without a commercial driver's license or school bus driver certification, and have the stop arm and flashing lights disconnected so that they can be used only for co-curricular transportation and not for route service between students' homes and the school. The discussion on the issue consisted of the school district's Purchasing Department representative asking the Board Members for authorization to seek bids for this fleet of school busses, and asking if there was any particular things that the School Board wanted included in the bid specifications. School Board Member Bill Blaine insisted that the busses must have three-point seat belts, based on the input that I had provided earlier in the evening. The rest of the Board agreed. The Purchasing Department rep said that he would include a specific requirement in the bid specs that stipulates that the activity busses shall have 3-point seat belts for every passenger.
Hurray for Bill Blaine, who happens to be a former guest on the Rob Sherman Radio Show. Hurray for the Members of the High School District 214 Board of Education! They are still considering whether to require 3-point seat belts on full-size school busses, but the trend looks good.
Tomorrow, the Des Plaines, Illinois, City Council considers making its seat belt ordinance a primary enforcement law, which would mean that police could stop motorists solely because someone in the car is not wearing a seat belt. On Tuesday, the Schaumburg, Illinois, Village Board of Trustees considers doing the same thing. Both Des Plaines and Schaumburg are in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I will be discussing with officials from both of those towns adding an additional provision to the ordinance: a requirement that passengers on school busses must wear 3-point seat belts, with that provision to take effect on a specific future date. That date could be in one, three or even ten years, but it would put school bus operators on notice that they must equip their fleets with 3-point seat belts within a certain period of time, so they ought to get started, now.
I'll let you know what they say.
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