I’m currently on a very crowded bus with many people standing up, even though we are on highways. Why can I stand unsecured while on the bus? Is it a matter of being able to safely get people out in an emergency? Thanks!
edit: I’m in Canada 🇨🇦
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Which country? In Norway it’s illegal to not wear a seatbelt on busses.
In the US long haul busses have seatbelts generally. Since they spend a long time at high speeds on highways near tractor trailers.
Local buses mostly deal with fender benders and are huge so they take the inertia much better.
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Imagine you have a billiards ball and a ping-pong ball on the table. If you roll the ping-pong ball at the billiards ball, the billiards ball won’t move much (if at all) when the ping-pong ball hits it. Roll the billiards ball at the ping-pong ball and the billiards ball will launch the ping-pong ball across the room… or at least move it a lot!
Busses are heavier than most other things on the road. One of the big dangers of an accident is the rapid change in speed. What the bus hits isn’t gonna slow the bus down that much, which means it’s not going to slow the riders down that much or that fast.
Regular citybusses don’t drive that fast (no highways). But those that travel across the country/countries do and have required seatbelts, at least in europe.
I drive a city bus. I was witness to the little 2 seater BMW convertible trying to go around another city bus at around 75 Km/hour and hitting the back left corner of the bus. The car was a wreck, like needed a hoist and a flatbed to move because it wasn’t towable in its condition.
The bus was sent back to the yard out of due diligence. It was mostly undamaged and could have continued in service.
Mass always wins in a collision, the people on board heard a resounding bang but felt only the slightest bump.
Don’t get hit by a train or a tandem logging truck you will die. Even at very low speed
The driver of the BMW was shaken up and bruised but otherwise fine BMW makes really good cars.
ELI 5. Busses are heavy and difficult to roll over.
Eli35 getting children to wear seat belts and designing bus seats to match car standards is both hard and expensive. Funding research that focuses how hard it is to turn over busses was a big cost saving endeavor if it means they didn’t have to apply the same standards. Busses for public transportation just benefitted from these efforts as they could also save costs on design and implementation.
Im Sweden its law to use belt on buses if the exist. Usually common for long range buses but not the city ones which could be crowded or ppl jump on/off often. But more accidents occur in the city at low speeds then highway so we should use it more. Bus manufacturers seem to remove the belts from new city buses
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