Why do most school buses not have seat belts?

(NEXSTAR) — Students have returned to school, and back onboard those bright yellow buses with their rows and rows of high-backed seats.

While they cart around your children, school buses frequently lack a safety feature that, if you were caught not wearing one, would result in a ticket: seat belts.

There are cases in which a bus will have a few seats with lap belts or the over-the-shoulder option, but there’s a good chance the bus your children take to school, sporting events, and field trips do not have seat belts (with the exception of the driver’s seat). 

How can these vehicles, responsible for such precious cargo, get away with this? 

It’s all about how the buses are built. 

School buses, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are “the most regulated vehicles on the road.” Among the various safety features built into them are the “protective seating, high crush standards and rollover protection features.”

These buses are built using a concept known as “compartmentalization,” the NHTSA explains. That entails using “strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing seat backs” and securing the seats to the bus floor. Students sitting in these seats are similar to eggs in a carton, the National Transportation Safety Board explains.

Most school bus passengers are also at a lower risk of being ejected because of compartmentalization. In our passenger cars and trucks, seat belts are meant to protect us from being ejected. On school buses, only passengers standing in the aisle and the driver are at a high risk of ejection, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation says.

While compartmentalization is effective, the NTSB argues it is not enough to prevent all injuries in the event of a bus crash. The agency has, in recent years, called for states to require lap and shoulder belts on new, large school buses.

It reiterated that call after a crash between a school bus and a service utility truck killed two people, including a 7-year-old child, in Tennessee.

During its investigation, NTSB found several of the bus passengers were not seated during the crash, increasing their risk of injury, the agency said in a 2022 press release. Their risk level could have been reduced if the bus seats had lap and shoulder belts, according to federal regulators.

Still, only a handful of states — Arkansas, California, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Texas — have laws calling for seat belts on school buses. In Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, however, local jurisdictions approve or deny appropriations for the installation of seat belts on buses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.