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SeatBelts. Is it time to add them to Disney’s Bus System?

With word coming in today from Arizona of another serious injury from the bus accident earlier this week, it might be time to look at providing seat belts for the Walt Disney World Resort’s younger patrons.

The five year old child who was a passenger was examined at the hospital after the accident for a head injury, but no one x-rayed the pelvis. After the child continued to complain of pain, the re-did the examination and it was found his pelvis was broken in two places.

Sheriff and passenger reports indicate the Disney bus never slowed down before it hit the parked tour bus. One minute everyone was in their seats and the next they were piled on the floor on top of each other. I wonder, is there some sort of device that would keep guests in their seats when a bus stops suddenly?

Turns out there is. More school districts are considering adding seatbelts to school buses. Disney even requires seatbelts on its Autopia cars, and those only go 7 mph. If Disney added seatbelts to its transportation fleet, at least parents would have an option for safety. Unlike the situation today.

Is it time for Disney to give families this option? What do you think.

14 thoughts on “SeatBelts. Is it time to add them to Disney’s Bus System?”

  1. The seatbelts for school buses may not work on the disney fleet. As far as i know school bus seat belts are designed for forwarding facing chairs. more and more disney buses are side rows with guests facing inward towards each other…is there a safe restraint for this kind of design?
    I think the seatbelts for autopia are to deter guests from getting out fo the cars and lessen the impact when people treat them like bumper cars.
    buses have never really had seatbelts…wonder why that is historically, they’re moving just a quickly as a car

  2. Probably. I imagine this would cause some delays though and people would hate that. Also, then you have to consider the issue of people standing up.

  3. I have no idea how much help seatbelts would be for those wacky sideways seats they have and, like Chris said, there’s nothing they can do for people standing up.

    As far as delays, I doubt it would cause many. They don’t need to REQUIRE them. The bus driver doesn’t have to walk up and down the aisle of the bus checking seatbelts like it’s Space Mountain. But it wouldn’t be the worst idea to at least have them in the normal forward facing seats as an option for people who might want to use them.

    More pressing, I think, is finding out why in the world the bus driver NEVER STOPPED when he saw a BUS stopped in front of him.

  4. We rode recently on the bus for the first time in a long time. After a hair-raising ride at 55mph where people were barely staying in seats and clinging to the overhead rails, we realized that we won’t get in a car on those same roads without putting on our seatbelts – why on earth would we drive them riding STANDING in a bus?

    We won’t take the bus again. No seatbelts and even if they installed them, there’s no guarantee that you would get a seat, and thus have one.

  5. Seatbelts should be installed, but not mandated by Disney if the law doesn’t require them. I’m all about personal choices and being able to make decisions I feel are best for family’s health and safety. I appreciate that Disney gives me the option of ordering healthy sides and beverages for the kids. I want to be able to choose to buckle the kids up.

  6. I really don’t feel a seatbelt will be too helpful for a bus. Really I think Disney needs to have stricter policies for the drivers and how they opporate the buses. I’ve been on a slew of buses at Disney World and all if the drivers drive differently. I’ve had slow drivers, fast drivers , average drivers, mean drivers , and horrible drivers. (two trips). I’ve even been on a bus that had an accident. ( mind you it wasn’t the bus drivers fault it was the fault of a seperate bus getting too close to the sideof ours ). But I honestly think this can be more avoided by enforcing stricter driving policies on the drivers. Speed, lanes, passenger numbers and limits. I know it costs money to do this. But why take the chance. It will only be so long until someone dies and then what will Disney do? There gets to be a point where you can’t just write these off as one off situations.

  7. “…it was found his pelvis was broken in two places.”

    The pelvis is a complete ring, which means it almost always breaks in two places. Breaking it in only one place is near impossible. So, mentioning a pevis is broken “in two places”, rather than that it’s simply broken, is just embellishment for gratuitous effect.

    That being said. five year olds don’t often break anything. Their bones bend a lot further than adults — or event teenagers — before a fracture occurs. And, their bones are stronger in relation to their weight than an adult. So admonishing you on the embellishment, isn’t meant to downplay the injury.

    Yes, all busses should have seatbelts. I’d leave any requirement up to local state law. I assume, since they’re not currently installed, that Florida law doesn’t require them, but providing them would allow people who accept them, to be safer. (And yes, wearing a seatbelt is nearly always safer.)

  8. I guess because I live in an area where mass transit is the norm, the idea of adding seatbelts to a mass transit system (because if you’re talking about adding them to busses for short stop issues, then you’d also want to add them to the monorail and ferry boat, right?) sounds like a profoundly silly idea. Mass transit accidents happen relatively infrequently compared to people getting hit on bicycles, walking down the street (or worse, jaywalking), driving around in their own car, and so on. The reason why it makes news is because the number of people that tend to be involved when there’s a mass transit incident, but ironically there’s usually fewer severe injuries or fatalities. Compare what happened with this Disney bus with the van accident in Kentucky in the same week–and I’m certain that the people who died in that van were all belted in well.

    I’d rather see “seatbelt money” used for investment in technology that would make a difference. Front motion sensors that allow for automatic breaking. A better onboard transport/communication system so that drivers aren’t having to both drive and try and punch in GPS stuff or answer dispatch calls. Better screen glare reduction glass on the front of busses for sunshine “issues”. Better overall training for drivers. That’s where I think the money would be more useful instead of seatbelts that more than half of the people on board wouldn’t use anyhow.

  9. I think Disney’s bigger problem is their reliance in the first place on a transit system that is infamous for such accidents. Isn’t that part of the reason Walt dreamed up his utopia of monorails and peoplemovers, and that they were implemented in the first two parks?

  10. Busses are so last century. Disney needs to vastly expand their transit system and take advantage of some of the great technologies that have been developed in the last 30 years and stop relying on busses. I’m not necessarily saying they should expand the monorail, but something other than busses would be a huge improvement.

  11. Actually busses are designed in such a way that seat belts actually make them less safe (with a few exceptions, i.e. Guests in wheelchairs need seat belts because their seats aren’t part of the bus design). But they should replace the busses with something more modern.

  12. Pingback: Another Disney Bus Accident: Improving Disney Transportation part 2 | Web Watch by Web Gangsta

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