'Lap belts required in school buses are more dangerous than no belts'

Road Safety Administration to probe implications of study on procedures.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
The National Road Safety Administration set up a committee of experts to investigate whether lap belts in school buses are more dangerous than no belts at all, after learning from The Jerusalem Post on Monday of a new published study with this surprising finding. NRSA director-general Yair Dori said the committee will be headed by its chief scientist, Prof. David Shinar, and its recommendations will be made public when they are ready. The study, an analysis of research on school bus seat belts, was written by Dr. Kobi Peleg and Sharon Goldman of the National Center for Trauma and Urgent Medicine at Sheba Medical Center's Gertner Institute. It was published in the latest issue of Harefuah, the Hebrew-language journal of the Israel Medical Association. The authors stated that regulations that took effect two years ago to require all school buses to have lap (two-point) belts for seated passengers were apparently established without consulting safety experts. The regulations did not require the installation of shoulder-and-lap (three-point) belts, which are more expensive but much safer. The researchers studied the medical literature around the world on injury to children in school buses who wore two-point or three-point belts and those who wore none at all. They found that lap belts raised the risk of serious injuries even when the bus was involved in mild accidents, as the children's bodies are not developed enough to absorb the force of the lap belts and can cause internal and spinal injuries and trauma to the abdomen and head. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has reported that lap belts are "not effective" in preventing injury in school bus passengers. Seat belts, including three-point ones, in private cars have to be suited to a child's height and weight, preferably with the use of booster seats. The study also found that children are at twice to three times higher risk of serious injury when they wear only two-point belts on the bus, compared to a reduced risk of 50 percent when using three-point belts. Seat belts meant for adults are not suited to kids, they wrote, as they press on vulnerable parts of children's bodies. Thus, concluded Peleg and Goldman, "apparently the intention of decision makers was to set regulations aimed at reducing injury and death, but insufficient broad and deep examination by professionals brought about dangerous regulations." To prevent harm to children on school buses, they concluded, the regulations must be changed to require the installation of shoulder-lap belts. An accompanying adult must be on the bus to ensure safe wearing of the belts and entrance to and exit from the bus. Bus drivers should not have responsibility for this, as they have to pay attention to traffic, they wrote. Sensors that alert bus drivers to people being behind the bus when it reverses direction should also be installed. In addition, other drivers should be barred from passing school buses when the buses are halted, as in many countries abroad, the authors declared.