Seat belt bill clears House transportation committee

NASHVILLE (WDEF) — Tennessee lawmakers, led by State Representative Joann Favors of  Chattanooga,  continued work today on legislation to require new school buses to have seat belts.

Members of the Transportation Committee were concerned with the cost to local school districts to install or purchase seat belts on school buses around the state.

But the bill’s sponsor, Representative Joanne Favors of District 29 feels the changes she’s made would ease the burden. The amendment she made to the bill removed the retrofitting requirement; the bill would require new buses to have the seat belts.

Other committee members wanted to talk about kids actually using the belts.

“My only concern is a good bus driver, you know, can’t get back in there, it was an accident, no fault of the driver, and the driver can’t get back in there and there are children that are locked in those belts and they can not dislodge those belts and they can not get out,” said Representative Terri Lynn Weaver of District 40.

Rep. Favors responded, “It was felt by the pediatricians, some engineers I spoke with, parents, and teachers, and they felt that will just minimal training and instruction that these children would use the seat belts”.

The death of 6 children in the Woodmore school bus crash last November, weighed heavily on some committee members.

“If we keep pushing it on someday – someday may never come, today’s the day we need to take action and make children safe in this state,” said Representative Bo Mitchell of District 50.

Committee Chairman Barry Doss suggested that the bill could be be held and studied this summer and reintroduced next year.

“We believe in you, we believe in your cause, and we believe in trying to help you work this out,” said Representative Doss of District 70.

But the bill will move forward.

“Let’s do what’s right. Let’s try to save lives,” said Rep. Favors.

The final vote was 9-7 to send the bill on to the Education Administration and Planning Committee.

Right now, California, Texas, Louisiana,New Jersey , New York and Florida make school bus seat belts mandatory for new buses.

But not all have completed the process; some districts still don’t have seat belts on all of them.