School bus driven off Interstate

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A school bus has driven off (it hit nose first) an elevated portion of I-565 and onto the street below, just a few miles from where I live. Four people are dead, and 30 patients are in critical condition or worse. My heart goes out to them and their families.

http://whnt.com/Global/story.asp?S=5707284

NOTE: the deaths are unconfirmed

Last edited by hyperbolic on 20 Nov 2006, 12:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How horrible .

Woah.

Sorry I don't feel as much empathy then I'm supposed to.

We're supposed to feel empathy?

No need to apologize for how you feel.

Does anyone know why schoolbuses don't have seatbelts. So many of these kids got hurt from being thrown around....

I told my husband that if we have kids and their school has buses without seatbelts, I will not let them ride.

I always argued that as a kid. It probably got me into a habit of refusing to go onto a bus when I was a kid. But they aren't on buses because it's generally too much of a hassle, especially with luggage such as shopping bags and prams and such.

very true. my dad used to write political cartoons for the local newspaper...one he did that I still have....one business man says " give me some good reasons for putting seatbelts on school busses" (or something to that effect) and the response was a list of children's names. that was 20 years ago. I am amazed that they STILL don't have seatbelts.

when my kids were in public school, if there was a field trip, I drove to and from. no way were they riding that bus with no seat belt.

yeah.


it just seems so hypocritical, though. like florida, we have this amazing (/sarcasm) slogan..."arrive alive". telling people all over to buckle up. you come to our state and that is the welcome you get.

but damn, well. it is just too much of a hassle to buckle up our children.


ugh.



public buses, okay. I can see that, maybe. but school buses should have them as a standard feature. some children have no choice but to ride the bus.

[quote="willow]when my kids were in public school, if there was a field trip, I drove to and from. no way were they riding that bus with no seat belt.[/quote]

Well, at least I don't feel like such a wierdo for taking such a hard line against school buses without seatbelts.

Well, at least I don't feel like such a wierdo for taking such a hard line against school buses without seatbelts.[/quote]


no, not at all. I think it is weird that parents would let their kids pile 3 to a seat without a safety belt and one adult to monitor everyone.

you're the right one. I like to try to see both sides of everything...but I can't understand why any parent would think trucking their kid off without a seatbelt is okay. the only conclusion I can arrive at, is that the bus is a more convenient option for the *parent*. which makes them idiots.

I'm originally from the Czech Republic. There are 2 types of public buses there - intercity (CSAD) and city buses. The legal speed limit within cities is 80 Km/hr, as I recall, but the buses in Prage rarely get above 50 km/hr (or roughly 30 mph). Both from the standpoint of common sense and someone who has taken advanced physics classes, people and objects don't easily become deadly projectiles at those speeds. Now, on CSAD I would disagree. The legal limit on the highway is 140 km/hr (or roughly 80 mph) and people routinely exceed that. Usually you're "with traffic" around 190 km/hr. Those buses should have seatbelts and storage racks. They don't, but I am bringing this up to make the point that there are fairly obvious instances in which public buses <i>should</i> have seatbelts, even though it may be an impractical suggestion for intra-city transportation.

I don't think that there is an excuse for school buses. If children live in a big enough city to have public transportation, they probably either walk or use public transportation (from my experience in NY and Czech). Aside from field trips, some school buses go to pretty rural areas to pick up and drop off kids, so they can get up to a pretty high speed just in day-to-day operations. I think it's pretty inexcusable to have children ride without seatbelts given all the data we have about safety.

Quoted For Truth.