this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 125 points 10 months ago (41 children)

The reason the bus driver has a seat belt and the kids don't is because the kids have a padded seat back in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. The bus driver has nothing but glass and the open road in front of them to stop them from launching forward in a crash. And seat belts help protect the bus driver from the airbags as they deploy from the steering wheel which have been known to deploy so forcefully that if you're not wearing a seat belt they can kill you, and even in some extreme circumstances completely decapitate you.

Also as someone else pointed out the kids could get trapped in their seats in the event of a fire. The bus driver has a little seat belt cutting tool available to them, but in a fire they might not have time to cut 72 seat belts to free all of the kids on a big bus.

You might ask, well what if the bus rolls? It's pretty unlikely that the bus would roll because bus drivers are trained pretty extensively and have to go through periodic medical exams and driving exams to make sure they're capable of doing the job safely. Even if the bus were in a situation where it might roll, it's very bottom heavy so it would take quite a lot to get it to tip over.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (15 children)

The fire stuff makes some degree of sense but the "padded seat" thing doesn't. 1) they aren't very padded in the back, and 2) by that logic people wouldn't need to wear seatbelts if they sat in a back seat in any car.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

F = ma

A car crash will affect an obsese 250lb bus driver much more than some 40lb little twerp.

Let's say the bus was traveling at a rate of 60mph🇺🇸 and hit a brick wall, and all passengers uniformly come to a complete stop at precisely 1 second. The 5 year old weighing 40lbs🇺🇸 would experience an impact of around 109 pounds of force (109.40 lbf🇺🇸) whereas the bus driver weighing 250lbs🇺🇸 would experience 683.67 lbf🇺🇸.

I absolutely did NOT run the calculations in 🤮 🇪🇺 🤮 before converting to 😎🇺🇸😎.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I mean, on the other hand, a 5 year old is generally more fragile than an adult man.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Nah. They're made ot of rubber. They'll be fine. Anyway, even if they aren't, it's not like society invested too much in them yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Have you never met a kid? Were you never a kid? The kids that scream and cry over small bumps do it because that's how they were taught to get attention and the adults feed that.

Kids are (biologically) way more resilient than adults. Their bones are more rubbery and slowly harden over time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I’ve always thought that humans should just evolve to be smaller now that we’re so smart. We’d need less food, people would be safer in impacts, we could build smaller and more efficient homes, etc. Think of the efficiency of a space program where each astronaut was 1/3 the weight and half the size!

It’s not like we have any natural predators any more, so size isn’t a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Small bumps are not the same as a vehicle crash. There's a reason young children can't sit in the front seat, because air bags deploying can kill them. Kids are small and flexible enough to have an advantage with lower impact stuff, but for high impact stuff they're smaller and squishier and that extra flexibility doesn't help as much, and once they hit puberty they mostly lose that because of the reduced cartilage in their skeletons. Younger children are especially vulnerable to head and neck injuries because of their less developed muscles.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Please stop.

You're arguing about something I didn't say. I was responding directly to the point about kids being fragile. As you say kids have a major advantage in smaller crashes for similar reasons as to how/why the highly intoxicated can sometimes walk away seemingly without a scratch. If a crash is bad enough to kill a kid, good chance the driver isn't walking away from it either.

As for kids sitting in the front seat, yes, airbags kill but pre airbags the kid would also be more likely to go through the windshield and that's also why smaller kids are buckled in facing the back of the back seat, so they have extra protection from the seat they are in. There is also the whole seat belt nit fitting right in the front or back seat and that's why we have them in something up to a certain weight class. It's not about age, it's about height and weight.

Seriously, stop. I didn't say anything about kids not needing seat belts or other protective measures. I was simply countering something that was definitely not accurate.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dude, fully grown men are objectively fragile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Children are objectively small and squishy. Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death for children for a reason.

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