Some want them, and some don’t. It’s a debate that has been going on for almost forty years. Should there be seat belts on school buses? Ron Farrand, director of facilities and transportation, says no.

“There hasn’t been any push for seat belts here in Carmel,” Farrand said. “We just follow the state specifications and do what they say.”

The state specifications say nothing about a need for seat belts, and, according to Farrand, Carmel won’t have seat belts.

“The safest form of transportation for school students is the bus,” Farrand said. “Buses are already safe for students. We haven’t had to deal with any major accidents here.”

The statistics support Farrand’s idea. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, children are nearly eight times safer riding a school bus than with their parents or peers. Also, school buses have only a 0.2 fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared to a fatality rate of 1.5 for cars.

I always feel safer being up high on a bus than I do in just a normal car,” sophomore Andrew Riemenschnitter said.

Putting seat belts in buses would also be a very expensive and time-consuming process. In order for buses to be able to put in seat belts, they would first need to get all new seats.

The seats can only be shipped in small quantities, so it would take almost 15 years before seat belts could be installed on all 186 buses in the Carmel Clay School System. By Charlie Browning <[email protected]>