Safety experts are calling for seat-belts on motor coaches. The demands come from a coroner's inquest into the deaths of four children killed in a bus crash in New Brunswick.

The accident occurred in April 2001 when a bus carrying 42 students from Massachusetts to a music festival in Halifax went off the road in Sussex, N.B.

One child was sitting on the floor at the time of the accident. Another had her legs draped across the laps of friends, while one of the boys was kneeling on a seat leaning over the back of another seat.

Emile Therien, head of the Canada Safety Council, says seat-belts should be mandatory on tour buses. He stopped short of demanding they be installed in school buses. Therien says an average of one child a year dies in a school bus accident.

Therien says school buses have safety features such as closely-spaced seats with high, padded backs which are intended to compartmentalize passengers.

The department also says lap and shoulder belts are difficult to adjust to safely restrain smaller children.

Driver qualifications, supervision important

The agency sponsored a discussion in 1999 on seat-belt use on buses. It concluded that several factors are key in safety:

• driver education and qualifications
• better and more consistent enforcement re: drivers and equipment
• supervision on buses
• student education about bus safety (on and around the bus)

Only New York and New Jersey require seat-belts on school buses weighing over 4,500 kg.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says there are very few school bus fatalities — averaging about 11 deaths a year. The NHTSA says seat-belts would provide little, if any, protection.

The school children were not travelling in a school bus but rather a motor coach. The inquest is now looking at the possibility of requiring seat belts on touring buses.

The bus industry has resisted any call for mandatory belts. It argues that the design of a bus body places the passenger's feet approximately 76 cm above the road surface, which protects the person from direct side impact crashes.

Martin Yeh, vice-president of Pacific Coach Lines in British Columbia, says he thinks his buses are safe. Yeh says he doesn't think riders would like seat-belts.

The Canadian Bus Association, which represents 85 per cent of all scheduled bus lines in the country, says the issue of seat-belts is manifold. It says government agencies must first determine why seat belts are needed. Then, an education campaign is needed to tell the public why they need to buckle up.

The CAB is also concerned with several issues:

• is the bus driver responsible for ensuring all passengers are buckled up?
• should the bus be stopped if a passenger refuses to buckle up?
• if a passenger is injured because of the seat-belt, will the bus company be held liable?