Why are busses significantly safer than cars when they have far fewer safety features (eg airbags, seatbelt etc)?
In: Other
The danger from accidents mostly comes in the form of rapid deceleration.
Many of the safety features in cars are to help you decelerate as softly as possible. The front of the car may come to an extremely sudden stop, but the part you are in just keeps going slightly slower for a bit as the front crumples and the seat-belt and air bag further helps you from decelerating to harshly.
Everything in the car is designed to soak up as much kinetic energy as possible in the event of a crash so that as little as possible ends up acting on your body and especially the important parts of it.
With a bus the problem is slightly different. A bus tends to be much heavier. If a buss hits your average obstacle it doesn’t come to sudden stop it tend to go through most obstacles while only being slightly slowed down.
In order for the bus to end up in the sort of accident that would make seatbelts or airbags really useful it would need to hit something extremely durable at full speed, like a bridge support on a highway.
It is not a common problem.
If you google for bus accidents that have had multiple injuries and fatalities it rarely ends up being the sort of accident where a bus drove into some barrier at high speed. It usually ends up being either a bus catching fire on the side of the road or rolling down a cliff when driving in some mountainous country.
Buses used for public transportation that mostly drive in cities tend to be fairly safe from the sort of crash that would make seatbelts and airbags a good idea.
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