Evidence of meeting #135 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was collision.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Noon
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for joining us via video conference.
Here is a quick question to get it out of the way. Are you representing the Canadian Paediatric Society in your role here?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
That's great, thanks.
You touched on it at the beginning, and I apologize for the repetitiveness of it, but can you outline what, in your opinion, are the main causes of death and serious injury from bus crashes?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
It's important to distinguish between passengers in the bus and passengers outside the bus.
The vast majority of fatalities in children occur around and outside the bus. After children have exited the bus, they're either hit by a car or unfortunately hit by the bus itself.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Do you mean when they're crossing a street, that kind of situation?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
That's correct. That's why there's been a lot of emphasis on putting in the stop arms and emphasizing legislation and penalties for drivers who go through the stop arm, because that's actually where most fatalities occur.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Okay.
In your opinion, would seat belts reduce deaths or serious injuries involving bus crashes?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
Again, it's a hard question to answer definitively. The numbers are actually, as I mentioned, quite low overall in terms of how many fatalities there are annually or over a number of years.
There's no doubt that certain fatalities would likely have been prevented. They prevent passengers from being ejected, and so if a passenger died from being ejected, in all likelihood, there's a chance they would have survived, but it's hard to say definitively one way or the other.
Obviously, if they got injured or killed outside of the bus, a seat belt wouldn't do anything on that one.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Right.
I guess where we're coming from in terms of the study is specifically looking at bus crashes and bus safety. You raise a very interesting point in terms of safety around buses, inside and outside of buses. I'm not sure how we'll blend that into our final report at the end of the day, but I think it's certainly something worth raising.
Trying to stick specifically to the actual crash of the bus—and you've said there are actually not that many instances of it—does the Canadian Paediatric Society have a formal position on the question of when it comes to seat belts on buses?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
They do not. There's a formal position statement with respect to auto safety, but there has not been a formal position statement or outline on that. We haven't gotten there yet.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Okay.
I'll turn the rest of my time over to Mr. Liepert.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Thank you.
These comments are very interesting. I guess what you're telling us is that if we're going to study this issue, maybe it's too narrow a focus. It seems that we're focusing on something that you are saying in your experience hasn't been a real problem, and yet the situations you are dealing with are transportation safety issues around the outside of the bus. Is that a fair comment?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
I think so. Can I get clarification? When you say “study”, are you specifically referring to seat belts on school buses, or are you referring to—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Just to be clear, I don't have the motion right in front of me, but it effectively talks about the safety around school buses and passenger buses. It's a study of bus passenger safety, so I guess it would in fact cover what you raise as an issue.
Maybe elaborate just a bit more to help us, then. You mentioned a couple of things, like maybe increasing fines for blowing through a security arm—those sorts of things. Could you elaborate a bit on what you would see as potential recommendations we could make for what you see as the biggest problem, which is passenger safety on the outside of the school bus?
12:05 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
Yes. Again, I think the epidemiologic trend sort of supports that. The largest number of injuries occur around the bus and not in the bus, with respect to crashes. That's just due to the fact that most kids go to and from school, as I mentioned, at low speed on city streets, and they are transported very safely.
In terms of broader recommendations from that perspective, I'm certainly not an expert in the technologies that exist, and I'd probably defer to other colleagues with respect to how we make the buses safer, but I would actually implore the committee to look at that as a primary motivator.
In terms of absolute number of lives and morbidity, the biggest bang for your buck is going to be in making sure that when kids get off the bus, when kids are walking around the bus and when kids are going to and from school, from that end, the part where they are pedestrians, they're actually at the highest risk.
The idea that with the technologies that exist today a kid can get hit by the bus that they just walked off becomes more and more unacceptable in my mind, especially when we now know.... As we can see in passenger cars, most of us probably drive cars that have rear-view cameras now. The idea of hitting someone behind me if I have a camera now is almost unthinkable, whereas 10 years ago that was an unfortunate occurrence.
I would certainly encourage the committee to look into that in particular. Certainly strengthening rules, safety and things that we can do for kids when they're on the bus is very important, but if we're trying to impact the most safety for the most kids, it's going to be when they're around and off the bus.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Rosenfield, for being here.
The purpose of this study has been to focus as much as we can on survivability in the event of a crash. What we've heard so far, for instance, has had to do with the integrity of the coach itself, and there has been some discussion thus far with the RCMP and the Transportation Safety Board on the effectiveness of seat belts and the considerations that have to go into the proper use and design of a seat belt.
In addition to survivability, we also have to look at injury mitigation. In other words, what steps can be taken in terms of the design of the coach, etc., that can allow more people to walk away from any kind of a crash—a rollover, as indicated, or other—as uninjured as possible?
I'll leave that open to your comments.
12:10 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
As a trauma physician, I always tell parents, families and residents I work with first of all that the best way to save someone is to prevent the crash from happening in the first place. When we're talking about these crashes—and I'll talk about what we can do to improve survivability, as you discussed—the best thing is to avoid having them happen in the first place. We know that, again, when we—
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I would prefer you not spend a lot of time there, because that's a given.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
We want to look at a situation in which a crash has happened, and I guess you've ministered to kids who have survived those crashes, or perhaps not—
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
—in some cases. What makes the crash more survivable and what mitigates the injuries?
12:10 p.m.
Paediatric Emergency Physician, Canadian Paediatric Society
Obviously, the biggest mitigator is speed. I won't spend much more time than that in terms of if the thing that it collides with or the bus itself is speeding; that's going to make the injury less and less survivable. With each increase of 10 or 15 kilometres per hour of speed, your survivability certainly does decrease. That's the first thing I look at with respect to survivability.
The next thing is going to be your injury patterns based on what happened to you in that compartment. As we discussed earlier, in a front-back collision, you're in a compartment, and you're typically more likely to survive if you're not belted. However, in the case of the rollovers and the ejections, if you're not contained within that compartment, you're more likely to sustain significant head injuries, and those are actually the number one killer, traumatically, in children.
Any way we can keep kids in their compartment, either by being belted or with other technologies that I've read about but won't discuss because I'm not an expert, would be the best way to mitigate potential injuries.
