Photo Courtesy of Teresa Hartley
Mid-Prairie Transportation Director Teresa Hartley was in attendance at the annual Iowa Pupil Transportation Association conference where they staged a bus crash to show the difference seatbelts can make in protecting students.
The conference in Des Moines included transportation directors, bus drivers, mechanics and other transportation personnel from across the state. Hartley says they had a school bus with eight dummies, four wearing seat belts and four who were not. The bus reached speeds of 35 miles per hour when it struck two cars head-on. Hartley tells KCII News that it was an eye-opening experience, “It was pretty neat. It was kind of chilling to walk through the bus. Everyone who wasn’t strapped in with a lap-shoulder belt were on the floor and under seats. When we looked at the results, basically it was six times more likely that the child would have been hurt versus being in a lap-shoulder belt. The ones in the lap-shoulder belt could have been hurt, but not killed. The other ones would have been much worse off.”
Hartley also said that during the conference they met with a transportation director from Minnesota who presented a fatal crash she experienced where having lap-shoulder belts would have caused more harm than good.
Photos taken by Teresa Hartley