Seatbelts are required by law where I live for normal vehicles. In a bus, it seems like seatbelts would be much more necessary so that in an accident, people don’t turn into projectiles where there’s more people than in a normal car.
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Because busses are so much larger. The reason seat belts are needed to prevent people becoming projectiles is because cars stop so much faster. But if a bus hits a car, it just flattens it. If it’s hit from the side, then seatbelts actually INCREASE the risk of injury substantially. Studies have repeatedly failed to find any real benefit to adding seatbelts to larger vehicles. According to the NHSTA, in the majority of fatal accidents, seatbelts provided no benefit anyway. They’re only really useful in minimizing injuries in minor accident, which aren’t really a concern for busses. Any accident powerful enough to kill someone on a bus is powerful enough to overcome a piece of fabric.
In an accident, the smaller vehicle will experience the more severe shock. Because a bus is very large, if it gets into an accident with a car, the shock to the bus passengers will be very mild. So bus passengers don’t need to worry about these kinds of small accidents.
You are still screwed if the bus drives into a concrete building, or falls off the road into a ditch.
The main reason buses don’t have seat belts is because people didn’t use them, so why bother with the cost.
> In a bus, it seems like seatbelts would be much more necessary so that in an accident, people don’t turn into projectiles where there’s more people than in a normal car.
You say that as if the number of people is what determines the hazard, as opposed to the mass of the vehicles involved.
A few thoughts:
Buses are typically one of the larger vehicles on the road, so in an accident between a car and a bus, the much larger mass and momentum the bus has will mean it will take much less of an impact compared to the car (a bus hitting a car will plow through it and push it out of the way, while a car hiring a bus will be stopped instantly).
Buses also typically stick to lower speed city roads, so accidents will typically be at much lower, safer speeds than a car travelling at high motorway speeds – the larger coaches used for longer journeys on motorways will often have seatbelts installed, unlike the smaller city buses.
It is also just impractical to fit, use and maintain. Over a shift in a bus there will be hundreds of travellers all getting on and off constantly and moving around. It just isn’t practical to police the use of seatbelts, to wait at each stop for people to be sat down, belted in and adjusted, and to be constantly checking them to ensure every belt works properly and is fitted correctly. And if you are allowing riders to stand and move around during a journey anyway, is there really any point?
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