We all know that riding the bus to school is not always fun. We can dream of the luxury of having our own car to drive to school, but the bus may be the only option for some time.

School buses in the larger part of the country do not have seatbelts, a vastly important safety measure. With the amount of students who take the bus to school, should complete safety not be guaranteed?

Parents may think that their children are in good hands when they send them off to school on the bus every morning, but that might not always be true.

An unexpected accident can happen suddenly, and in an instant, their children could be seriously injured. No one can assure that this possibility will never happen.

It is strange knowing that it is a law to have a seatbelt in a car, but not on a school bus, a transportation system that children and teenagers use daily.

Even so, some students do not seem to care for the installation of seatbelts because they believe that buses are already safe.

“I feel like we’re fine without [seatbelts] right now,”” junior Yuki Zheng said. “I don’t know of any major accidents that happened because we don’t have a seatbelt.”
On the other hand, some students believe that the installation is necessary and can help prevent any major accidents from occurring.

“I feel that there should be seatbelts on school buses,” senior Dezhawn Dumornay said. “It should be required for lower education levels because little kids jump around but for high schoolers they should be fine.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wearing a seatbelt cuts the risk of serious injuries and death by 50%.

It is known that most of the drivers and passengers who have been killed in crashes were not wearing a seatbelt.

Given these facts, how is it okay to let students ride in buses without them?

If you have to wear seatbelts in a car, then you should have to wear them in a bus too.

There should be seatbelts added to all school buses everywhere in order to protect the children riding in them, including FCPS. The FCPS Transportation Servixes were unavailable for comment concerning the possibility of seatbelts in FCPS buses.

Even if one thinks the probability of having a bus crash is small, there is no one that can give 100 percent promise that it will never happen. It is obviously better to be safe than sorry.

When seatbelts are installed in school buses, even the bus drivers will feel relieved and more comfortable driving students to school every day.

The bus drivers who pick up the teenagers and children for a drive to school every day are responsible for each child.

What is holding back counties from adding safety belts to their buses is the high cost. Installing them would add between $8,000 and $15,000 to the cost of a bus.

This is especially controversial with the current issues in Fairfax County surrounding the budget and economic status.

It is a horrific thing to realize that a school district does not have enough money to keep its students safe.

The students’ safety should be the number one priority for the school board. Schools should not be risking their students’ lives just for the sake of the money.

Even if seatbelts were to be put on school buses, it is understood that it will not be easy trying to get the kids and teens to agree to actually use them.

To solve that issue, the students would have to be educated on the importance of putting them on and what could happen if they do not.

Experiments with dummies showed that in a bus crash, the two who were belted remained safely in their seats while the ones who were not ended up being thrown throughout the school bus. The effect seatbelts can have during a crash is dramatic.

If you are a person who rides the bus to school, you should start thinking about your well-being on this type of transportation when you do not have a safety belt available.

To put seatbelts on buses will finally give the ability to say your children are the safest they can be in a school bus.

Students need to be given protection on the bus– they are the future.

To have seatbelts fixed into school buses is undeniably crucial and should be put into action as soon as possible for the security of students everywhere.

Unquestionably, seatbelts save lives.