Letter to Senator Praising the School Bus Safety Act

 Dear Senator Duckworth, 

My name is [student's name] and I am a Junior in college, studying Social Work and Education at the University of Illinois Springfield. I have resided in Springfield, IL my entire life and plan to raise a family here one day. I am writing to you today with great gratitude. While conducting research on legislation to enhance safety for schoolchildren, I learned that you are advocating for safer school buses under “The School Bus Safety Act 2021,” S. 2539. A bill that has been brought up before, and you are working to hopefully get it passed in this congress. I understand that you have much convincing to do and numerous hoops to jump through to achieve this goal. However, I admire and appreciate your dedication to the safety of our youth. I think it is extremely important for these changes to be implemented. 

For example, seatbelts are necessary to ensure safety while traveling. I also think it is a given that we must improve the fire safety on school buses to potentially save many lives. As stated on your website, “According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1,207 people have died in school transportation-related crashes between 2009 and 2018, which is an average of 121 people each year.” This number is far too high, something needs to be done to lower the death rates of children on school buses. Many of the provisions you are advocating for could do so. The NHTSA also changed its policies in 2015 to suggest that all school buses should in fact have three-point seatbelts. So why is this bill not passing into law? 

I do have some questions concerning this matter. Where will funding that you plan to provide school districts with to make these changes come from? Will it be taken from local education budgets that are already stretched far too thin? I read in one article that could cost as much as $10,300 per bus to install these seatbelts and other safety improvements. Once the bill is passed, how long do school districts have to be in compliance with the new standards? I understand the money must be pulled from somewhere, but it concerns be as a future educator that it will be taken away from other students’ needs.

With these questions and concerns aside, I support your actions towards making this bill a law. At least eight other states have already mandated seat belts on school buses, and some of those states are dominated by Republicans, so this should be a non-partisan action. What kinds of things do you need from citizens in order to make this happen? What can I do to support this cause? To me, there is no reason this bill should not be passing, and I am willing to help advocate for the change. 

Thank you for your time and dedication,  

Sincerely, 

It is a good letter, and I hope you send it. 

How strange that this bill did not already pass in the previous times it was introduced (I think it was introduced in 2017 and 2019 or 2020). If Texas can pass a state law like this, I wonder what prevents the federal government. Are there people who think this is not a matter for federal regulation, and decisions about school transportation safety belong to states, rather than the federal government? School busses do often cross state lines (for students who live near a state line and cross it for field trips or sporting events). Perhaps it just has not been a priority.

Sometimes there are economic choices that make financial sense, but are not morally good.  When Ford was looking at the gas takes on the Ford Pinto in the 1970s, their engineers calculated that a certain number of rear-end collisions would cause explosive fires.  They looked at other cheap and tiny cars, and saw that the Pinto was only slightly (very slightly) more dangerous than those other cars. They considered the costs of each life lost, and the cost of  recalling millions of cars to make the adjustments to marginally increase safety, and decided they should not recall the Pinto.  Maybe that is going on here. Perhaps the new safety regulations would cost so much, and the lives saved (how many— 50 per year? 20 per year?) are so few that someone has decided we do not need to enact this into law.