Parent presses for school bus seatbelts

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This article was published 19/01/2019 (1928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Ste Genevieve woman concerned about her daughter’s safety has launched an advocacy campaign to bring seatbelts to school buses in Manitoba.

Petra McGowan is asking others who share her concerns to join Manitoba Parents for Mandatory Seatbelts, a Facebook group she launched earlier this month. As of Wednesday, it had attracted 228 members.

“When she first stepped on the bus, I was so surprised,” McGowan said in an interview, recalling the first time she escorted her six-year-old daughter, Emerson, onto a Seine River School Division bus bound for Ste Anne Immersion, a 45-minute trip.

In Europe, where McGowan lived previously, school bus seatbelts are a preventative safety measure as commonplace “as brushing your teeth.”

In winter, when road conditions can change in a matter of hours, McGowan said she worries as she awaits her daughter’s return.

“If the bus is five minutes late, I’m anxious.”

Her will to take action was further galvanized last October, when The Fifth Estate, a CBC investigative documentary series, aired an episode called “Unbuckled,” which delved into the 1984 study Transport Canada relies on to justify its stance that school bus seatbelts can do more harm than good in a collision.

McGowan said she found the documentary’s conclusions “pretty disturbing.”

Shortly after the episode aired, Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau ordered his department to reexamine the relevant research on school bus restraints.

This week, a spokesperson for Garneau’s office said a timeline for completing the review will be discussed at a cabinet meeting later this month.

“Recognizing that school bus safety is a shared responsibility among all levels of government, this review will involve close collaboration with provinces and territories, safety advocates, and a diverse safety stakeholder community,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

A Manitoba government spokesperson said motor vehicle safety standards fall to Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler’s department, which awaits the findings of Garneau’s review.

A spokesperson for Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen declined to make the Steinbach MLA available for an interview.

McGowan said provincial lawmakers need not wait for Ottawa to make up its mind.

“We shouldn’t be reviewing anymore. We know it is unsafe.”

She wants the province to draft a bill similar to one tabled in late November by former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne. If passed, Bill 56 would see three-point harnesses installed in all Ontario school buses by 2025.

“I want that to happen in my province as well,” McGowan said.

Her own reading of the 35-year-old Transport Canada study found it didn’t account for all types of collisions.

“It didn’t address sideways rollovers, which are the most lethal.”

McGowan said she’s buckled in for the long haul, as laws don’t change overnight. The parents who’ve joined her online group will continue to share information, discuss concerns, and consider advocacy strategies like a letter writing campaign while they await action from politicians.

She said the group has already bolstered similar grassroots efforts in other provinces, such as a Change.org petition started last November by Gary Lillico, a school bus driver in British Columbia.

For now, Transport Canada maintains the high-back padded seats found on school buses provide compartmentalization during a collision, distributing the impact over a child’s upper body. A lap belt causes a child to pitch forward, increasing the chance of head and neck injuries.

McGowan called Transport Canada’s stance “isolated” and out of step with safety regulations for other types of vehicles.

However, some safety organizations support the federal government’s view. The Canada Safety Council website calls school bus travel “16 times safer than travelling in a family car.”

Transport Canada’s Motor Vehicle Safety branch website adds “less than 0.02 percent of all Canadian road deaths involve an occupant of a school bus.”

McGowan said she isn’t calling school buses unsafe, just pointing out seatbelts would make them safer. She believes studies on modern lap-and-shoulder belts support her argument, and noted medical professionals—those who deal with the aftermath of bus accidents—tend toward her view.

In a 2015 statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics said new school buses should have safety restraints, and encouraged school divisions to install height and weight-appropriate three-point harnesses.

While a belted child can be harder to extricate, McGowan noted a child knocked unconscious can also be hard to move.

“We’re giving kids a fighting chance if there are seatbelts,” she said.

Seine River superintendent Mike Borgfjord said divisions must follow current safety legislation, and pointed to Seine River’s strong safety record.

Trustees will discuss the topic of seatbelts at their Tuesday board meeting. Borgfjord said he hopes divisions are consulted if government regulations are amended.

Seine River hasn’t run any costing scenarios for installing seatbelts in its fleet of 70 buses, which ferry 70 percent of division students to and from school each day. The longest one-way bus rides in the division can run up to 85 minutes, due to its expansive catchment area, Borgfjord said.

McGowan allowed the cost of retrofitting may be significant, but pales in comparison to the value of the cargo.

“You cannot put money against a child’s life.”