Sunday, April 5, 2009

Kay working for seat belts on buses?

Texas has seen some pretty wicked bus crashes over the years, involving fatalities when buses tip over in accidents. Lack of seat belts are often to blame.

It looks like Kay is joining other members of Congress to do something about it (link). Excerpts follow:

Last August in rural Texas, a motorcoach carrying Vietnamese church members went over a guardrail and plummeted into a dry creek bed, killing 17 people and injuring 38. And on Jan. 30 this year, a tour bus crashed in northwestern Arizona, killing seven tourists and injuring 10 after it veered across a highway and flipped on its side.

The NTSB for years has recommended installing seat and shoulder belts, improving window glazing to keep passengers from being ejected during a crash, and strengthening bus roofs for protection against crushing during rollovers. Brown, the Democratic senator from Ohio, along with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia this year reintroduced a bill they launched in 2007 to mandate the improvements.

But many in the bus industry say there may be other ways to improve safety, and they point to cost estimates as high as $20,000 per bus for seats designed to have seat belts -- a prohibitive sum, some say, for small charter companies.

Who would have thought seat belts would be a controversial issue? I always felt it was strange that so many parents who otherwise obsess about cleanliness and safety and caution in their homes, send their children to school on buses without seat belts. I don't think this particular bill would apply to school buses, however, just charter buses.

Probably not a campaign issue, but I wonder what Rick's position on seat belts on buses would be.

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Hey now, campaign characters. Be nice. I know a lot of you on both sides, so I don't want any overly foul language, personal attacks on anyone other than the candidates themselves, or other party fouls. I will moderate the heck out of you if you start breaking the bounds of civility.