Poynter's Al Tompkins writes in his daily column,
Al's Morning Meeting.
A Prince George County (Washington, D.C., area)
school bus overturned Wednesday morning,
leaving three children injured. National cable TV unveiled unnerving
images of children sprawled out around the overturned bus and
paramedics working on them.
The coalition has an extensive collection of
background reports for you. Briefly, you should know:
Thirty-five
years ago in California, UCLA engineers performed a series of classic
school bus crash studies, which determined that the major cause for
injury in school bus accidents was the inadequacy of school bus seats.
They proposed "compartmentalization" of the child occupants between
high-back, well-padded and well-anchored seats capable of absorbing
crash forces with large aisle side panels to contain riders. A lap belt
was recommended to provide substantial additional protection.
Ten
years later, in response to a Congressional mandate, [the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration] promulgated Federal Motor
Vehicle Standard 222 that provided for some of the proposed features.
The 222 seat was better anchored, padded and designed for energy
absorbing and was 4 inches higher than seats then in use.
For three decades, parents have been told that belting children in a
bus only makes it more difficult to get them out of the bus if it
crashes. The ruling wisdom is to keep the passengers buckled so they
won't get thrown around during a crash. No consensus has been made on
this issue.
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