Opposition PCs pitch mandatory seatbelt use on new Manitoba school buses

A private member's bill aimed at enhancing the safety of Manitoba children riding in school buses isn’t being received warmly by a safety expert, who contends that mandating seatbelt use could be more detrimental to a child’s safety.

Wayne Ewasko, education critic for the Opposition Progressive Conservatives, introduced the legislation Wednesday, which would ensure that all newly manufactured school buses are equipped with modern, three-point seatbelts.

“It's all about student safety, Ewasko said. “Making sure that parents and guardians know that when their child is leaving the home and getting on to a school bus, that they're getting to school safe and sound,” 

He says the idea, which could become Bill 220: The School Bus Safety Act, circulated after speaking with a bus driver from the Sunrise School Division, which is also where Ewasko taught for 17 years.

Earlier this year, Texas passed a law mandating that all school buses in the state have three-point lap and shoulder belts. This came in the wake of nearly 2,500 crashes involving school buses across the state last year, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.

“Nobody ever wants to see anything bad happen to their child or to a student, and I think if we can make this happen, why not?” Ewasko said.

No Canadian provinces have enacted similar legislation.

The Canada Safety Council says over the past decade worth of data it has, there has only been one fatality and fewer than 2,000 injuries nationwide to children riding school buses.

There are 2.2 million children riding the school bus every single day across more than 50,000 school buses in Canada, according to Lewis Smith, the council’s manager of national projects.

“We believe that school buses are already very effective at keeping their passengers safe, and seatbelts on school buses may have, in a theoretical world, practical use in specific collision instances,” Smith said Wednesday. 

“Those collision instances are so rare and the operational context adds extra risk factors that we don't believe make it worth it.”

Although the majority of the council’s research relates to a 1984 Transport Canada study, the federal institution has a task force that looks at various safety measures on school buses that can be implemented.

There have been three pilot projects done over the last five years — two in British Columbia and one in Ontario. The findings were mostly pointed to the operational risks that come with the introduction of seatbelts on school buses.

“Younger children have a harder time putting them on … the compliance rate is difficult for a bus driver alone to enforce,” Smith said.