A Back Track on School Bus Safety

Brooks Schuelke

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Last week, in the wake of the Sherman bus wreck, I reported that Texas had taken a giant leap forward during the 2007 legislative session by passing a law that requires school buses to be equipped with seat belts.

Now, remarkably, the Texas legislature is apparently backtracking on that promise, and plans to revisit the issue in the 2009 session, a mere one session after the law was passed (our legislature only meets every other year). What happened in the last year?

This is just inexplicable to me. Texas has mandatory seat belt laws and spends countless dollars in advertising the "click it or ticket" campaign, but our youngest, most vulnerable citizens don’t need seat belts in school buses?

I know there is some debate about the benefits of school bus seat belts, but given last year’s recommendation from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration that buses contain seat belts, I didn’t expect Texas to be so quick to reverse itself.