> "Even the smallest reduction in the number of bus riders could result in more children being killed or injured when using alternative forms of transportation," it said.
Fascinating, someone actually thinking rationally about safety.
I remember feeling jealous when my teammates on the ski-team took their parent's cars up the mountain. But now I feel really safe for being in a school bus on those wet, snowy roads.
Those seem to be ridiculously good numbers and back up everything stated in this article. I would worry that making ANY changes could actually increase that number.
This seems to be the cue for those annoying people to start reciting "if it saves even one life...".
In reality, these numbers are incredibly good, so much that chasing after any improvement is bound to be extremely expensive. The money that would be spent on seatbelts or whatever could obviously be invested to greater effect in some other effort.
I'd be far worried about a seatbelt malfunction locking a child inside an overturned bus or with a vehicular collision where the car is leaking gasoline and has the very real potential to catch on fire, which given sufficient heat means there's a very real risk of a diesel fire from the school bus.
I'd agree, six deaths a year out of 24 million is acceptable losses by any measure. I'd consider 1 in a million deaths in school busses to be fucking amazing, but 0.25 in a million is absurdly good.
"The child will go against the seat, and that will absorb most of the impact,"
It's remarkable how scientists, engineers and tech folk are able to abstract the description of a high-trauma event, especially for a young child's body and describe it in such matter-of-fact terms.
I note this here not only because it is striking to read but to also consider that we do this in our own work in the startup world. Often we will think of an act such as 'unfriending' someone as simply a manipulation and purge of row(s) in a database when, from the user's perspective, it may be a significant and deeply nuanced real-world event.
I think in both cases we could make better products if we articulated better and humanized events such as "going against the seat" or "unfriending".
(nb: I'm not comparing the impact of a mass body trauma to that of unfriending someone, fortunately for us there is very little if anything in startup world that has such real-world significant consequences)
I don't disagree that "we could make better products" when analyzing things from a human point of view — that's practically day 0 in any industrial design class — but I dispute the implicit comparison here. It's extremely important that the person who saves your life doesn't think of it human terms. They need to be thinking in absolute terms because those terms will give them the power to save your life.
It again brings to mind the (Canadian version of the) Iron Ring. Building things that abuse the forces of nature and exert power over the shape of our work, building these things and having them work, is distinctly beyond human terms. It's why you pair architects with structural engineers: a friend of mine always complains that his job is to remind architects about gravity. I wonder just how many lives have been secretly saved like that.
Of course, the best solution is to somehow hold on to both sides, but I think too much sentiment these days is reactionary against the dehumanized computer technology we're working our way past. I really liked the last slide of one of Job's recent keynotes where they put a signpost labeling the intersection of "technology" and "liberal arts". Always keep that intersection in mind even when you make a decision to walk in one of those directions looking for it.
Well there's also the fact that kids bodies are much more malleable than the average adult body, and given that as crashes aren't expected, the kids won't be tensing up when they hit the seat and will kind of flop around a bit. Same reason drunk drivers almost never die in the accidents they cause. In most cases I would bet that the bus crash wasn't traumatic for the kids but something exciting they'll talk about for a while.
> I think in both cases we could make better products if we articulated better and humanized events such as "going against the seat" or "unfriending".
Some supporting evidence, or even argument, would be nice. What's the relevant mechanism? (Possibilities include "injuries are not analyzeable in terms of physical properties" and "if they don't think of victims as humans, they won't take accidents seriously".)
BTW - Are you suggesting that the folks who analyze accidents are not sufficiently aware that humans are involved? Based on what?
Six deaths a year? Add seatbelts and you'd have more deaths than that from communicable disease. Lets have all these kids put their hands on exactly the same surface.
I went looking to verify that statistic thinking it can't be right, but I didn't find what I expected. According to the source below:
"Approximately 27 school aged children die in school bus accidents every year. Seven of these are passengers in a school bus and twenty are pedestrians. Of these twenty pedestrians, fourteen are killed by school buses"
In other words it seems your child is twice as likely to be run over by its own schoolbus rather than to die inside it in a collision!
Brain dead or maimed completely doesn't count as dead. So the number should be higher. A lot of school buses have short low seats with metal frames, those seats should be replaced with the high back 4 inch foam seats.
Wow, thats an actually enlightening article from msn.com! I've been thinking in recent years about school bus seat belts and until now I hadn't understood why the state didn't require them. Now I feel a little better informed about the trade-offs.
I have a feeling that my thinking on the topic is tainted by the ever-present "Click it or ticket" billboards. This is something I feel despite having lived through the dawn of airbags, which were instituted in such a way to hype passive restraints. An example of that hype was that cars without airbags had to have automatic seat belts. Wouldn't that be just the ticket for those pesky non-seatbelt-wearing kids!
I wonder if in the future:
* adding seat belts will cause manufacturers/school districts to skimp on passive restraints
* the push to fuel efficiency will lead to lighter buses in the school district fleets, necessitating a move to seat belts anyway
In a crash, "The child will go against the seat, and that will absorb most of the impact," said John Hamilton, transportation director for the Jackson County, Fla., school board.
How do you go against the seat when the bus flips over?
Too bad the article didn't comment on the frequency of bus rollovers. One is left to conclude, though, that they must be extremely rare, if the average annual fatality rate is 6.
Instead of the seat absorbing the impact, the soft, metal roof does the job.
And more seriously, do buses have crumple zones like cars do? If a bus were to roll over, is the passenger compartment designed to work like a roll cage? Or does it just collapse?
This article makes me feel like I'm talking to someone who would say: "I don't wear seatbelts because I want to be thrown from the car in an accident".
It all comes down to money. If we put in seatbelts things will cost more and I'm not taking a pay cut.
Did you actually read the article? Six kids die in a school bus every year. Awful, yes, but it's nothing compared to how many die in cars. Want to save more kids? Get more school buses with the money, not more seat belts.
...Except that the article's point is backed up by actual safety analyses, while the guys refusing to wear seatbelts are making an after-the-fact rationalization that contradicts safety statistics. There's a difference.
On a side note, Anyone else surprised that installing seat belts would cost an additional 8000 - 12000 _per_ bus. That just sounds a lot of BS. $170 million per state. LOL.
Why? Because your car is 40 times less safe than school bus?
In fact, those in the back without seat belts are not only risking their own lives, but are also a deadly threat for the driver and a passenger in front.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TwkGMeQjTQ#t=4m (in Russian. The first test is with front with seatbelts, in the back only child is using it. The next test is front without seat belts, in the back both adults are using them, a child is not).
BTW, in my country seat belts are mandatory in both front and back of the vehicle.
Actually, the big reason to put on your belt in the rear of the car is that the mortality rate of the front seat passengers goes through the roof when the rear passenger does not have a belt on. The front seat passenger is held in place by a seatbelt and then pummeled from behind by the person in the rear seat slamming into the back of the front seat.
>I don't understand how anyone can believe it's safer to be unrestrained and free to bounce around the cabin in a crash.
Did you read the article? That is the point; most people share your view.
Buses are safer because the tightly packet seats act like little pods of foam, like little safety bubbles. If the bus hits something, it's 4 inches of foam that the kid is going to hit...basic physics, f=ma, a=v/t...the foam increases the time it takes the moving body to slow to a stop, and spreads the force over a longer period of time. Since it would be instantaneous, not aggregate (I'm making both of those terms up, no idea what you would actually call this) force that you care about, a longer time at a lower force == a safer collision.
Think about it like this: you have two buckets, one of them is called "child" and the other called "seat". These two buckets contain a liquid called "momentum". If the bus hits a brick wall, all of the momentum from the child is going to get transferred into the "seat" bucket. The interstitial bucket you use to transfer this liquid is called "force".
The foam seat means that you're using a little tiny thimble to transfer the momentum from the child to the seat...it takes a long time, and it isn't very big...it's "gradual".
It's counter-intuitive, but that is one of the reasons that buses are safe.
It's not a matter of absolute level of safety (is it more or less sage), it's a matter of cost/benefit. And a matter of diminishing returns.
Yes, it sucks that 6 kids per year still die in a tragic manner. Horrific for the family. But the article is pointing out that busses are already much safer than more common forms of transporting.
So the issue isn't one of more safety, less safety. If we could afford every convenience, then more safety would be better. But you cannot take safety in isolation without consider other factors, such as cost, rate of accidents, etc.
"And, maybe more importantly, banning kids who won't stay buckled up would be very unpopular."
More importantly, that would likely result in more kids being killed by taking less safe modes of transportation to school (EDIT: if the article is true anyway).
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|15 years ago|reply
Fascinating, someone actually thinking rationally about safety.
[+] [-] codevandal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civilian|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rookie|15 years ago|reply
Those seem to be ridiculously good numbers and back up everything stated in this article. I would worry that making ANY changes could actually increase that number.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|15 years ago|reply
In reality, these numbers are incredibly good, so much that chasing after any improvement is bound to be extremely expensive. The money that would be spent on seatbelts or whatever could obviously be invested to greater effect in some other effort.
[+] [-] civilian|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electromagnetic|15 years ago|reply
I'd agree, six deaths a year out of 24 million is acceptable losses by any measure. I'd consider 1 in a million deaths in school busses to be fucking amazing, but 0.25 in a million is absurdly good.
[+] [-] dotBen|15 years ago|reply
It's remarkable how scientists, engineers and tech folk are able to abstract the description of a high-trauma event, especially for a young child's body and describe it in such matter-of-fact terms.
I note this here not only because it is striking to read but to also consider that we do this in our own work in the startup world. Often we will think of an act such as 'unfriending' someone as simply a manipulation and purge of row(s) in a database when, from the user's perspective, it may be a significant and deeply nuanced real-world event.
I think in both cases we could make better products if we articulated better and humanized events such as "going against the seat" or "unfriending".
(nb: I'm not comparing the impact of a mass body trauma to that of unfriending someone, fortunately for us there is very little if anything in startup world that has such real-world significant consequences)
[+] [-] tel|15 years ago|reply
It again brings to mind the (Canadian version of the) Iron Ring. Building things that abuse the forces of nature and exert power over the shape of our work, building these things and having them work, is distinctly beyond human terms. It's why you pair architects with structural engineers: a friend of mine always complains that his job is to remind architects about gravity. I wonder just how many lives have been secretly saved like that.
Of course, the best solution is to somehow hold on to both sides, but I think too much sentiment these days is reactionary against the dehumanized computer technology we're working our way past. I really liked the last slide of one of Job's recent keynotes where they put a signpost labeling the intersection of "technology" and "liberal arts". Always keep that intersection in mind even when you make a decision to walk in one of those directions looking for it.
[+] [-] Semiapies|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jameskilton|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anamax|15 years ago|reply
Some supporting evidence, or even argument, would be nice. What's the relevant mechanism? (Possibilities include "injuries are not analyzeable in terms of physical properties" and "if they don't think of victims as humans, they won't take accidents seriously".)
BTW - Are you suggesting that the folks who analyze accidents are not sufficiently aware that humans are involved? Based on what?
[+] [-] by|15 years ago|reply
Here is John Hamilton who made that remark:
http://web.jcsb.org/Trans/index.htm
What evidence do you have that he is a scientist, an engineer or a tech folk?
[+] [-] johngalt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frossie|15 years ago|reply
I went looking to verify that statistic thinking it can't be right, but I didn't find what I expected. According to the source below:
"Approximately 27 school aged children die in school bus accidents every year. Seven of these are passengers in a school bus and twenty are pedestrians. Of these twenty pedestrians, fourteen are killed by school buses"
In other words it seems your child is twice as likely to be run over by its own schoolbus rather than to die inside it in a collision!
http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/personal_injury/bus/statis...
[+] [-] gscott|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duffbeer703|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eli|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|15 years ago|reply
I have a feeling that my thinking on the topic is tainted by the ever-present "Click it or ticket" billboards. This is something I feel despite having lived through the dawn of airbags, which were instituted in such a way to hype passive restraints. An example of that hype was that cars without airbags had to have automatic seat belts. Wouldn't that be just the ticket for those pesky non-seatbelt-wearing kids!
I wonder if in the future:
* adding seat belts will cause manufacturers/school districts to skimp on passive restraints
* the push to fuel efficiency will lead to lighter buses in the school district fleets, necessitating a move to seat belts anyway
Next up: why don't city buses have seat belts?
[+] [-] sdh|15 years ago|reply
How do you go against the seat when the bus flips over?
[+] [-] ScottBurson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trafficlight|15 years ago|reply
And more seriously, do buses have crumple zones like cars do? If a bus were to roll over, is the passenger compartment designed to work like a roll cage? Or does it just collapse?
[+] [-] dkl|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jws|15 years ago|reply
…evidence is incomplete and uunconvincing, and they unconvincing, arguing that…
[+] [-] dfgherher|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] maeon3|15 years ago|reply
It all comes down to money. If we put in seatbelts things will cost more and I'm not taking a pay cut.
[+] [-] Xuzz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjscott|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcrawl|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrandonM|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|15 years ago|reply
Keep those little frackers in their seats.
If everyone isn't buckled in, driver should stop the bus.
$15k to install seatbelts? What if they weren't made from gold (or the gold lining the pockets of the vendor).
[+] [-] ericd|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannicken|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rimantas|15 years ago|reply
BTW, in my country seat belts are mandatory in both front and back of the vehicle.
[+] [-] TrevorJ|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamii|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lee|15 years ago|reply
I imagine it'd be very easy to get ejected from the back seat of a car in a rollover/accident.
Do you ever sit in the middle back seat?
[+] [-] smackfu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nakkiel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brian6|15 years ago|reply
It's definitely cheaper, though. And, maybe more importantly, banning kids who won't stay buckled up would be very unpopular.
[+] [-] blhack|15 years ago|reply
Did you read the article? That is the point; most people share your view.
Buses are safer because the tightly packet seats act like little pods of foam, like little safety bubbles. If the bus hits something, it's 4 inches of foam that the kid is going to hit...basic physics, f=ma, a=v/t...the foam increases the time it takes the moving body to slow to a stop, and spreads the force over a longer period of time. Since it would be instantaneous, not aggregate (I'm making both of those terms up, no idea what you would actually call this) force that you care about, a longer time at a lower force == a safer collision.
Think about it like this: you have two buckets, one of them is called "child" and the other called "seat". These two buckets contain a liquid called "momentum". If the bus hits a brick wall, all of the momentum from the child is going to get transferred into the "seat" bucket. The interstitial bucket you use to transfer this liquid is called "force".
The foam seat means that you're using a little tiny thimble to transfer the momentum from the child to the seat...it takes a long time, and it isn't very big...it's "gradual".
It's counter-intuitive, but that is one of the reasons that buses are safe.
[+] [-] kbatten|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Travis|15 years ago|reply
Yes, it sucks that 6 kids per year still die in a tragic manner. Horrific for the family. But the article is pointing out that busses are already much safer than more common forms of transporting.
So the issue isn't one of more safety, less safety. If we could afford every convenience, then more safety would be better. But you cannot take safety in isolation without consider other factors, such as cost, rate of accidents, etc.
[+] [-] nck4222|15 years ago|reply
More importantly, that would likely result in more kids being killed by taking less safe modes of transportation to school (EDIT: if the article is true anyway).
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|15 years ago|reply