Buckling On The Bus

In the days before school starts each September, familiar posters, reminding motorists to watch out for schoolchildren, begin popping up on utility poles. This year, petitions in favor of requiring all students in New York State to buckle up when they're on a school bus have appeared all over town as well. It is an idea, coming from the mother of an East Hampton kindergartener, that has merit.

Children and adults in every other vehicle must, under a widely publicized and reasonably well enforced law, buckle up. Why not children in a school bus?

Another law requires school buses manufactured after July 1, 1987, to be equipped with lap belts; it does not say anyone has to use them.

Existing practices among local school districts vary widely. Jack Perna, the Montauk School Superintendent, says two of his district's five buses, provided by the McCoy company, have lap belts, and Mr. Perna encourages students to use them. John Mensch Jr., the owner of Seacoast Transportation, which has contracts that cover all or part of five town districts, says all his buses have belts but that drivers generally do not ask students to use them.

In the East Hampton School District, buses are provided by the Schaefer family, which has a fleet of a dozen that were mostly manufactured before 1987, that is without belts.

The primary concern of those advocating seat belts on school buses is the possibility of injuries to unrestrained children during a collision or rollover. It is a legitimate one.

However, a bill that would have required seat belts in all school buses and a second that would have mandated their use stalled earlier this year in the State Assembly, after its Transportation Committee was unable to come to terms with the matter of responsibility. Should a driver, with so many passengers to watch, be held responsible if a child unbuckled and was injured after the bus was in motion?

State lawmakers, in cooperation with the automotive industry and safety experts, ought to be able to work out a practical and enforceable law. As the ads say, seat belts save lives.