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In a perfect world, the understandable answer to this question would be YES, school buses should have and enforce the seat belt laws. However, we do not live in a perfect world. As parents and concerned citizens, we are always worried about our Children's safety and their welfare. And that is a good thing, only if we know and understand what is happening.

In our present-day school environments, seat belts in school buses are a thing of the past. The main contributor to this factor is the lack of enforcement. Fundamentally, no one party can be blamed for this lack of oversight but you have to understand the situation inside the bus to see how this can be problematic. First of all, in most buses there is only a driver and there are no assistants or any sort of teacher present in the bus to help assist the driver and keep order in the bus. Many times, the drivers are doing more than they are hired to do. Bus drivers are forced to maintain control of the bus and drive safe while making sure kids are not too unruly or doing anything unsafe. Already, this strains the concentration levels of the bus driver, affecting their driving while putting more unneeded pressure into their lives.

Many times it is a common sight in New York City schools to see bus drivers trying to manage conflict situations in their bus while driving. This tends to get dangerous and is a practice that is strictly unsafe for our children. And when things get out of hand, drivers pull over and call the police for assistance. Already, this is a problem. Now you want to add an extra burden to these already strained bus drivers?

Already many bus drivers strive to make sure no kids are standing up or throwing items around the bus or engaging in unsafe behaviors. But that is simply too much to do all at once and adding more restrictions to the bus driver is not a good idea. In many cases, these drivers are going well above and beyond what their job description says they should do. And in a typical scenario where a cop pulls a school bus over for children wearing no seat belts, who should be fined? The bus driver or the children's parents?

The simple fact is that many of these kids simply do not care enough and already many school buses are like zoos on wheels. There is only so much we can do in the name of safety before it starts getting out of hand and endanger people or strain already existing resources. By introducing a seat belt law for buses and then enforcing it would mean we have to do more to make

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