The excursions, the end of course trips, the trips to the summer camp begin. For some children, the great bus tours begin and for their parents the concern of road safety on buses for school children, for children, begins.
Is it logical that on the bus the safety measures in terms of retention are simply a belt like the one used in airplanes?
Especially considering how the child restraint systems are in the private vehicle. Do you not appreciate a more than remarkable difference between them?
Urban displacements that have been doing at least twice a day, millions of children in our country have almost finished or are about to do so in just a few days.
Now they start another type of movement, trips, excursions, great distances traveled by buses but for many, the security measures in this means of transport live in a kind of legal vacuum that in the end the person who leaves unprotected is the user and especially, due to their physical characteristics to the child, to the child.
Bus seat belts are the same as those used on airplanes, but do we face the same circumstances in both means of transportation? Obviously nothing is further from reality.
And the regulations?
In 2005 the DGT implemented the obligation to use child restraint systems in private vehiclesIt is also true that it was not so long ago but that legislation was welcome at the time.
This regulation clearly marked how the system should be, what the weight of the child should be, indicating the need for a type of chair or another, what position the restraint chair had to take inside the vehicle to carry out its task of ideal way.
Eleven years have passed since that regulation came into force. Maybe it's time for the competent authority to develop a new regulation that now regulates how minors should travel on buses in order to protect your physical integrity.
It is obvious that avoiding the accident will not be in our hands as parents when we travel by bus but it may be in our hands, at this very moment, to begin to demand that the current legal vacuum around how minors should travel be regularized in this means of transport, the bus or the coach.
A brake with a speed of 20 km / h, a speed not very high precisely, says goodbye to the body of the child against the armchair in front against hard areas such as the tray, the handle or even the ashtray that have the seats on the back .
No, perhaps this impact at that speed does not imply that the child is in danger of his life but at that speed, at 20 km / h, that impact can produce very serious injuries to the jaw, face, nose, skull, shoulders ... And if we climb a little speed we are closer to getting worse.
All this yes, with the retention system placed on the upper part of the child's legs, on his pelvis, something that leaves the rest of his body completely loose to the albur of the physics, and this is what we really call security?
Legislation
The last thing that has been tried has been in the Valencian Community, by the political group Compromise, which in 2013 presented in the Valencian Corts a Proposal not of law calling for the regulation of the safety of children in bus transport.
From this political group they recognized that it is beyond all logic that the safety requirements in the transport of minors in cars have increased substantially in recent years, which is still logical and desirable but nevertheless, child safety in buses, in school transport is not even adapted to the legislation that is already operating in the European Union.
Hopefully, the sooner measures are taken in this regard, prevention is always better than cure and more on issues that affect children, such as this case.
Photos | Pixabay
In Babies and More | Are school buses safe? | Seat belt for children also on buses
