NJ Should Tighten School Bus Seat Belt Laws, NTSB Says

MOUNT OLIVE, NJ — All new school buses should be built with lap and shoulder seat belts, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended in the wake of several fatal bus crashes, including one in Mount Olive that killed a teacher and a student.

The recommendations were made during a meeting to discuss deadly crashes in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Baltimore in 2016. They call for states that already require lap belts, including New Jersey, to toughen laws and make shoulder belts mandatory as well. States without any school bus seat belt laws should enact laws requiring full lap/shoulder belts, the board says.

"The recommendations that we issued and reiterated today, if acted on, will help ensure that new school buses are manufactured with tried and true occupant protection such as lap/shoulder belts, as well as collision avoidance technology such as automatic emergency braking," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.

The NTSB is not investigating the Mount Olive crash, although they did gather information the day-of. The May 18 crash killed teacher Jennifer Williamson-Kennedy and 10-year-old student Miranda Faith Vargas, and injured 43 others, some critically.

Students aboard the bus recalled seat belts holding their classmates in place as a bus flipped over.

"I heard a scraping sound and we toppled over onto the highway," fifth-grader Theo Ancevski told the Daily Record. "A lot of people were screaming and they were hanging from their seat belts."

The cause of the crash remains under investigation by New Jersey State Police, and it's not clear if shoulder seat belts would have reduced the number of injuries.

Officials from the Morris County Prosecutor's Office have declined to comment on the crash, saying the investigation into the crash remains active and open.

School buses are some of the safest vehicles on the road, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says. They tend to be involved in less crashes than cars, and those accidents result on fewer injuries or deaths. Typically, four six school children die annually in school bus accidents.

Read more Patch reporting on the fatal Mount Olive school bus crash:

• 2 Killed, 43 Injured In Rt. 80 School Bus Crash
• Was School Bus Trying To Make Illegal U-Turn Before Rt. 80 Crash?
• Driver, 77, Revealed In Fatal NJ School Bus Crash
• Paramus Girl Still Critical Following School Bus Crash
• Paramus Community Mourns Dedicated Teacher Killed In Crash

With reporting by Daniel Hubbard, Patch Staff

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