[Sans-Culotte]

The cost of retro-fitting and installing seat belts on buses would be enormous in the extreme.

Yeah, but they could make seatbelts a feature on school buses going forward and grandfather the old ones. They didn't have seat belts on school buses when I was a kid, either; but if they'd started making them standard on new buses then all buses today would have them now. Gotta start somewhere.

[Az Joe]

I used to drive a school bus... 60, 70, sometimes 80 kids under 12. You do not want to have to go around undoing seatbelts on 5, 6, 7, or 8 years olds who are panicking should the bus catch fire or you get stuck on a railroad track.

[WayneS]

So who is responsible for unbuckling all the kindergarteners’ seat belts in the event of a fire?

A 60 passenger vehicle which can potentially be filled with people unable to unbuckle themselves is more dangerous with seat belts than without.

[Dan(9698)]

The Army uses school busses, the one used by our unit in `1959 had seat belts.