subject: Improved bus seats [print this page] Mass transportation vehicles such as bus seats have been widely used in virtually every city and town in the developed world for decades. Generally speaking, these vehicles typically include two or more columns of bench seats aligned one behind the other with a minimum necessary distance between a seat and the seat behind it. It is uncommon to find automobile-type lap or shoulder restraints for the passengers on public transportation vehicles, apparently because passengers repeatedly fail to engage the belts, either due to carelessness or due to perceived discomfort. In general, then, there is not currently a widely used restraint system to prevent passengers of mass transportation systems from being tossed from their bus seats in the event of a vehicle collision or rollover.
This problem is particular egregious in the case of school buses. Many children ride the bus seats to and from school five days a week in all weather, traffic and road conditions. The high frequency of ridership under a variety of conditions indicates that it is inevitable that more children passengers will experience a collision while riding a bus than virtually any other passenger group. This is exacerbated by the fact that children can tend to be particularly unruly while riding the bus to and from school; the children cannot be relied upon to engage the current safety restraints, even if they were provided. What is needed, therefore, is a safety restraint system for vehicles with bench bus seats that is easy to use and to be monitored.
