this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Probability (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by lawrence@lemmy.world to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
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[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 110 points 2 years ago (6 children)

The reason the bus driver has a seat belt and the kids don't is because the kids have a padded seat back in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. The bus driver has nothing but glass and the open road in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. And seat belts help protect the bus driver from the airbags as they deploy from the steering wheel which have been known to deploy so forcefully that if you're not wearing a seat belt they can kill you, and even in some extreme circumstances completely decapitate you.

Also as someone else pointed out the kids could get trapped in their seats in the event of a fire. The bus driver has a little seat belt cutting tool available to them, but in a fire they might not have time to cut 72 seat belts to free all of the kids on a big bus.

You might ask, well what if the bus rolls? It's pretty unlikely that the bus would roll because bus drivers are trained pretty extensively and have to go through periodic medical exams and driving exams to make sure they're capable of doing the job safely. Even if the bus were in a situation where it might roll, it's very bottom heavy so it would take quite a lot to get it to tip over.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

An interesting stat about school buses is that over the last 20 years or so, there has been a roughly equal number of bus driver deaths and passenger deaths. Since a school bus typically carries a much larger number of passengers (as many as 70 or more) than drivers (1), this means that the risk of death for the driver is far higher than that for the passengers (although exactly how much riskier it is is difficult to determine from the published data).

Another interesting safety feature of school buses is that the bus bodies are clipped to the chassis rails rather than being bolted or welded to them and thus are held in place solely by friction. This is so that the bus body can slide forward a couple of feet along the rails in the event of a head-on collision, which greatly reduces the deceleration forces experienced by the passengers (this crash test video shows the phenomenon clearly). This does not help the driver much either as they're sliding forward into the engine compartment or into the oncoming vehicle in the case of flat-front buses.

It’s pretty unlikely that the bus would roll

Yeah, buses really aren't going to roll unless they get hit hard on the side by an equally-large vehicle traveling at a high speed - or unless they run afoul of some mythbusters.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

The mythbusters clip about the bus is one of my favorites, because it showed just how hard it is to tip over a bus.

[–] macaroni1556@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

Wow I didn't know about the sliding rails thing. Interesting hidden design.

[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

The fire stuff makes some degree of sense but the "padded seat" thing doesn't. 1) they aren't very padded in the back, and 2) by that logic people wouldn't need to wear seatbelts if they sat in a back seat in any car.

[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 28 points 2 years ago

The other advantage of buses is that they have a lot of inertia due to their mass. The most likely thing for them to hit is a car and most likely because that car made a mistake. The bus can easily push a car out of the way without losing too much velocity. The same is not true of your average civilian vehicle.

[–] Perfide@reddthat.com 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
  1. by that logic people wouldn't need to wear seatbelts if they sat in a back seat in any car.

That logic is the exact reason in some places it is(was? My info is a few years old.) legal for adults in the back seat to not wear a seat belt. Not saying I agree with the logic, but that actually is the case in some places.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

they aren’t very padded in the back

They're not exactly well-padded, but other than the outer frame of the backs (which is 1" square steel tubing), the backs are made from stamped 30-gauge sheet steel which deforms quite readily on impact. Kids can get bruised in collisions by impacting the seat backs but they're usually not badly hurt.

[–] dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone -3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

F = ma

A car crash will affect an obsese 250lb bus driver much more than some 40lb little twerp.

Let's say the bus was traveling at a rate of 60mph🇺🇸 and hit a brick wall, and all passengers uniformly come to a complete stop at precisely 1 second. The 5 year old weighing 40lbs🇺🇸 would experience an impact of around 109 pounds of force (109.40 lbf🇺🇸) whereas the bus driver weighing 250lbs🇺🇸 would experience 683.67 lbf🇺🇸.

I absolutely did NOT run the calculations in 🤮 🇪🇺 🤮 before converting to 😎🇺🇸😎.

[–] IHasAHat@startrek.website 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

High schoolers ride busses too. They're a little bigger than 40lb twerps at that point.

[–] dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 2 years ago

But they're objectively the worst kind of child, so meh.

[–] dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In fact, I think newborns shouldn't need any restraints at all.

Toss em in the back of the truck on the drive back home from the hospital. They'll be fine!

[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I mean, on the other hand, a 5 year old is generally more fragile than an adult man.

[–] dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 years ago

Nah. They're made ot of rubber. They'll be fine. Anyway, even if they aren't, it's not like society invested too much in them yet.

[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Have you never met a kid? Were you never a kid? The kids that scream and cry over small bumps do it because that's how they were taught to get attention and the adults feed that.

Kids are (biologically) way more resilient than adults. Their bones are more rubbery and slowly harden over time.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I’ve always thought that humans should just evolve to be smaller now that we’re so smart. We’d need less food, people would be safer in impacts, we could build smaller and more efficient homes, etc. Think of the efficiency of a space program where each astronaut was 1/3 the weight and half the size!

It’s not like we have any natural predators any more, so size isn’t a big deal.

[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Small bumps are not the same as a vehicle crash. There's a reason young children can't sit in the front seat, because air bags deploying can kill them. Kids are small and flexible enough to have an advantage with lower impact stuff, but for high impact stuff they're smaller and squishier and that extra flexibility doesn't help as much, and once they hit puberty they mostly lose that because of the reduced cartilage in their skeletons. Younger children are especially vulnerable to head and neck injuries because of their less developed muscles.

[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Please stop.

You're arguing about something I didn't say. I was responding directly to the point about kids being fragile. As you say kids have a major advantage in smaller crashes for similar reasons as to how/why the highly intoxicated can sometimes walk away seemingly without a scratch. If a crash is bad enough to kill a kid, good chance the driver isn't walking away from it either.

As for kids sitting in the front seat, yes, airbags kill but pre airbags the kid would also be more likely to go through the windshield and that's also why smaller kids are buckled in facing the back of the back seat, so they have extra protection from the seat they are in. There is also the whole seat belt nit fitting right in the front or back seat and that's why we have them in something up to a certain weight class. It's not about age, it's about height and weight.

Seriously, stop. I didn't say anything about kids not needing seat belts or other protective measures. I was simply countering something that was definitely not accurate.

[–] dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Dude, fully grown men are objectively fragile.

[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago

Children are objectively small and squishy. Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death for children for a reason.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I just want to point out that decapitation, in a medical sense, doesn't necessarily mean the head is removed from the body. You can be internally decapitated.

[–] ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

Huh, TIL

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Like...brain stem shearing? Yuck.

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not necessarily. There are stories of horsemen getting bucked while staying in the saddle and having to hold their head up by the hair while riding to medical attention. They didn't become quadriplegic but the internal decapitation lost them control of their neck.

Not too sure why it isn't considered a broken neck though

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 7 points 2 years ago

There are stories of horsemen getting bucked while staying in the saddle and having to hold their head up by the hair while riding to medical attention

Fuck I was not prepared for that horrifying of a read at 3pm on Thursday

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Iirc, Mythbuster tried to roll a bus and couldn't.

[–] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

What do you mean it's not capitalism being evil again?

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

Other countries have seatbelts on school buses, so it's not exactly some cut and dry question.
It's not even the case in all US states.

The NTSB recommends that we start enforcing seat belts on school buses.
https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/safety-topics/Pages/schoolbuses.aspx

They agree with what you said, but disagree that the risk of being trapped outweighs the risk of being fired face first into a seat back.

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nah it's so kids don't get trapped in a fire

[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago

Usually seat belts are made to be ejected by a simple button and spring mechanism. We perfected the technology decades ago.

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

People are doing all kinds of justifications to why school buses don't have seatbelts, but why don't regular public transportation buses have seatbelts?

[–] GladiusB@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Because they are friggin tanks. 63000 pounds of you can't hurt shit unless you are bigger. Which in a fixed route system is rare. Because bigger things are on the freeway and busses are on surface streets.

I was a bus driver. I have been in two accidents. One a car was upset and rammed my rear left panel. Took off his bumper. It didn't even chip my paint and no one was harmed in the coach.

It's up to the operator almost always if their passengers are harmed. There are exceptions. But if you are operating at the speed limit and just on the designed route there are few times where people will be in harms way inside the bus. In fact to make good time for the route and the passengers it's usually safe to go 5 mph under the posted speed limit.

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I assumed it was kids cant beat each other with them

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s because in the event of an emergency it is harder to get them out

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Indeed, much easier to pick their mangled bodies off the street.

[–] HerrBeter@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Scrape the jam and bits directly into a storage container

[–] wabafee@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Is the reasoning for the comic, like it's cheaper for a funeral cost than someone who survives and incur cost during recovery not including the chance for a lawsuit on both scenario?

[–] numberfour002@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Nightmare on Lem Street