By Ryan Quinn, Charleston Gazette-Mail
The National Transportation Safety Board recommends that new school buses have seat belts. It notes that, without them, rollover crashes can kill kids.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also backs bus seat belts.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head Mark Rosekind said in 2015 that, “I want us to concentrate on this simple, basic statement: School buses should have seat belts. Period.”
Rosekind left the NHTSA job when President Donald Trump took office, and the highway administration has stopped pushing for bus seat belts.
Also not pushing for it: the West Virginia Department of Education, which this week recommended to the state Board of Education bus policy changes that, still, wouldn’t require seat belts on all buses.