Connecticut Bus Safety
Accidents involving Buses have repeatedly made headlines in our State. Most recently, a school bus driven by an operator with a poor driving history was involved in a tragic bus crash which led to the death of a Rocky Hill High School student and injured scores of others. In this particular event, it appears that the lack of mandatory seat belts for Connecticut school bus riders shares blame with the bus operator's error and that of his employer for hiring this individual in the first place without conducting a thorough driving history background check. This occurence is now reverberating through Connecticut's legislature and perhaps will finally enable the necessary political will to adopt laws protecting the vulnerable passengers of such motor carriers. The sheer weight and mass of the bus when combined with highway speeds or rollovers at even city street speeds produces sheer and crush injuries to the muscular skeletal frame of many riders.
Mandatory seat belt requirments would come at a price which most would support and yet another example of how industry will fail to adopt proven and available technology where neither the government nor the civil courts have held them accountable for not providing it as a standard safety feature. It shocks the conscience to imagine that cost benefit studies have been undertaken and held up in private collaborative settings as justification for holding back upon the implementation of this widely accepted technology in passenger car settings. It remains a blemish upon a progressive State such as ours that such legislation has repeatedly been held hostage to political jockeying and never yet made it our of Comittee and onto the floor for a successful vote. Perhaps things would have turned out differently for the Greater Hartford Academy students and this young talented High Schooler who accompanied them on this bus ride.
Given an appropriate case to force the issue, I remain convinced that a single verdict against even one bus manufacturer which has failed to install this readily available equipment and the vendor which distribute these machines may have a resounding impact on the accepted standards of conduct.
