Mandatory school bus seatbelts may be a possibility for Lethbridge

A new e-petition, signed by more than 1,400 people and co-sponsored by Lethbridge MP Rachael Harder, is renewing a call for legislating school bus safety belts.

The issue of mandatory seatbelts in school buses isn’t new, as calls for them have been around since the 1980s, leaving some Lethbridge parents wondering why they’re not already mandatory. Nancy Perron is one of them.

“We have to put kids in five-point harnesses, make sure they’re facing backwards for years, and then you put your kid on a school bus and they don’t have a seatbelt,” she said.

“So why is it mandatory in a car but not in a bus?”

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The City of Lethbridge operates school buses for two school districts, including Lethbridge School District No. 51 and Holy Spirit Catholic Schools. They transport about 12,000 kids to and from school every day.

As of right now, city officials said they haven’t pushed making seatbelts mandatory.

“That’s not something we’ve considered at the moment,” said Scott Grieco, the city’s transit operations manager. “But you know, we operate under the auspices of, specifically, Alberta Transportation.

“So if Alberta Transportation says that seatbelts are going to become mandatory, we will definitely follow suit.”

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The city was unable to provide exact costs of adding seatbelts to new buses, but according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the U.S., the cost would be around $7,000 to $10,000.

Retrofitting old buses would cost even more, but for parents like Perron, it would be money well spent.

“If they had seatbelts, it would be a lot safer,” she said.

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Greico said the city will be looking into the possibility of engineering its future buses to support having seatbelts.