School bus seatbelts could be mandatory in B.C. by 2021

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A Fraser Valley man’s mission to make kids safer when they ride to and from school has made it to the B.C. legislature.

Liberal MLA Laurie Throness is presenting a private member’s bill on Monday that, if passed, would make seatbelts mandatory on all new school buses by 2021.

It comes after Gary Lillico, a Chilliwack school bus driver with a petition demanding seatbelts on Canadian school buses reached out to him over the summer. Lillico started the petition last year when he began driving the buses.

“I got on the bus and I put a seatbelt on and I look behind [me] – they don’t have seatbelts. I actually assumed they did have seatbelts on school buses,” he says, adding he’s concerned for the safety of students.

“Any site impact or rollover accident of any kind, the kids just get ejected out of their seats,” he says. “They get tossed across and into the ceiling, out the window.

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He adds like many school bus drivers, he has routes that go on highways.

“I’m going 110 and a kindergarten child comes up, walking down the aisle and tugs you on the back,” he says. “It’s distracting, for one, when you’re going 100 and it’s extremely dangerous.”

Lillico hopes MLAs support the bill and school bus seatbelts become law in B.C., then eventually in other provinces.

Throness says the more he looked into the lack of seatbelts, the more he realized there needed to be a policy change.

“We really have to do something about this. I think it’s time to require three-point seatbelts on all new school buses,” he explains, but he wants to give school boards some time to make the change and it will need to be phased in if the bill passes.

“The industry says that there’s something called compartmentalization that protects kids, but it only protects kids from front and rear crashes, not from rollovers or side crashes.”

Lillico’s petition has collected more than 120,000 signatures across Canada.

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He says he doesn’t understand why seatbelts aren’t already mandatory on school buses and points to the death of Jennifer Noble, a 17-year-old who died in Alberta in 2008 after her school bus crashed.

“Her mother was a first responder, firefighter and she attended the scene on duty, to her own daughter’s death and that one really hit home for me. That was my ‘a-ha’ moment, I have got to do something,” Lillico explains.

The bill will not be voted on today. After being presented, it will likely go to a committee and eventually further readings. Throness says even if the NDP doesn’t support his private members’ bill, he hopes the party will introduce its own bill that would make seatbelts mandatory on school buses.

Claire Trevena, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure says the provincial government has taken steps to improve road safety.

“We are a part of a Canada-wide task force initiated by Transport Canada that is looking at measures to improve safety in and around school buses, including seatbelts. The Task Force’s recommendations will be presented this coming January,” she says. “The safety of people on our roads is our top priority and we want to make sure kids are safe getting to and from school. If there is a way to improve the safety of school buses we are interested in looking at it – and we already are.”