It is a well-accepted fact in the motor vehicle safety community that increases in injuries are principally the result of increases in motor vehicle crashes. To a lesser extent, increases in injuries are related to the average occupancy of motor vehicles. The State Directors Association analyzed the National Safety Council school bus injury data and concluded that the data contains serious flaws, and therefore has no utility in assessing injury trends in school bus-related crashes. Additionally, the National Safety Council data do not provide any information on the severity level of the injuries. In order to know whether or not a serious safety problem exists in any type of motor vehicle, and more importantly how to develop an appropriate safety countermeasure, it is essential to understand the nature of the injuries.
Data indicate that only a very small percentage of school bus passenger injuries are serious.
Discussions are underway with the National Safety Council to see what can be done to improve the consistency of the data supplied by the states, and to better characterize the meaning of the data once it is published. The importance of gathering quality data, using appropriate analytical techniques, and publishing useful reports is well recognized in the school transportation industry. What CNN did not discuss were the 43 serious school bus crashes that the National Transportation Safety Board investigated to evaluate the effect that seat belts may have had in those crashes. These crashes included frontal and side impacts, and included a large number of rollovers. For each crash, an evaluation was made of whether the use of seat belts would have made a difference in the injury levels of the school bus occupants.