Seat belts on school buses? This Macon facility will start manufacturing them

It’s National School Bus Safety Week, and Middle Georgia residents are weighing in after the opening of a new bus safety manufacturing facility in Macon.

In partnership with Blue Bird, IMMI opened a facility to manufacture SafeGuard school bus seats and deliver safety products near Blue Bird’s manufacturing plant in Fort Valley. The result is a 75,000-square-foot plant on Pio Nono Avenue producing industry-first seats with lap-shoulder belts and driver airbags for school buses, company leaders said.

The project, which launched with a grand opening on Oct. 2, has already brought about 80 jobs to Macon, with more expected as demand grows, according to IMMI spokesperson Julia Cooley.

“School buses are already the safest vehicles on the road, but with Blue Bird’s new safety features, like lap-shoulder belts, they’re even safer,” Cooley said in an email, highlighting that, for the first time, school bus drivers will also be protected by a frontal airbag, IMMI’s 4Front.

Beyond manufacturing, IMMI partners with agencies, advocates, and school districts, to offer training on lap-shoulder belts.

“Ultimately, the decision to add belts rests with the school district,” Cooley said.

Opinions are divided on that decision.

Anthony Jackson, executive director of transportation for the Bibb County School District, called the new safety features “nice enhancements,” but noted that no definitive plans are in place at the moment to purchase buses equipped with them.

“We will be exploring this as an option,” he said, noting that school buses are the safest form of transportation for students. Jackson added that the new facility and its local access to upgraded buses could possibly influence the district’s transportation strategy moving forward.

Jackson voiced concern, however, over whether students would consistently use the belts

Some Middle Georgia parents see belts as essential.

Byron resident Takiyah Adams-Sheppard, a mother of a high school student in Houston County, called for seat belts on all buses, noting her daughter had been injured and traumatized by a bus accident a few years ago.

“I never understood why there weren’t any (seat belts),” Adams-Sheppard said. “She was scared to ride again for a while. Had she been in a seat belt, I don’t think she would have sustained the injuries she received. Hopefully, the school board will require all buses to be equipped with some type of safety belts.”

But other voices are skeptical.

Patricia James, Macon resident and former school bus driver of five years, raised practical concerns about evacuation and potential harm from seat belts.

“If the bus got in a wreck or caught on fire, which is the scenario covered in bus drills, young children could be trapped and unable to free themselves, especially if the bus was not upright,” James said.

James also worried that seat belts might lengthen bus routes if students struggle to fasten them, and could introduce new safety hazards.

“When children are on the bus, they sometimes hit each other. It would be a nightmare for them to be armed with metal belted seat belts,” she added.

On Oct. 15, Blue Bird published materials aimed at “debunking myths” about three-point seat belts on school buses, including claims that seat belts slow evacuations or can be misused.

The materials note that students can unbuckle seat belts with a single click. The company also challenges arguments that the compartmentalization design of school buses eliminates the need for seat belts in a crash

In response to such concerns, Cooley pointed to federal safety recommendations.

“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have called for lap-shoulder belts on school buses to better protect children,” she said, noting that the belts are federally regulated and similar to those used in cars.

“It’s easier to evacuate an uninjured child restrained by a lap-shoulder belt than one who was injured and not in a seat belt,” Cooley said.

Currently, eight states require lap-shoulder belts on all new school buses, according to IMMI and Blue Bird.

Georgia law does not mandate lap-shoulder belts on new school buses, but the state’s department of public health recommends that all children age 5 or younger should wear seat belts if available.

There are advocates pushing for seat belts on school buses nationwide, and Middle Georgia has not been an exception.

After a fatal Houston County School District bus crash in 2018, a family’s online petition for mandatory seat belts on all Georgia school buses gathered nearly 900 signatures a month after the incident, The Telegraph previously reported.

Six-year-old Arlana Haynes, a first-grader at Parkwood Elementary, died Jan. 30, 2018, from injuries sustained in a school bus crash the previous day.