Evidence of meeting #136 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 bus.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for being here.
You mentioned that you're aware that there are some jurisdictions where safety belts are being used on school buses.
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
There are some, yes.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
Yes.
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
I know that Sudbury currently has a short bus for students with special needs that uses seat belts.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay, thank you.
It occurs to me that, depending on the characteristics of the travel, seat belts or other types of restraints might be more justifiable, for instance, when you have a school bus operating at higher speeds in rural conditions versus urban conditions, where traffic is moving at a relatively stable and slow rate, especially in the morning.
Based on your comments, would you suggest that safety belts might be unnecessary in certain applications, that the cost wouldn't be justified by any additional safety?
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
What I want to clarify is that it's not about whether the cost is justified or not. Under the listing of requirements or studies that I've suggested, are seat belts on buses, under our conditions with kids in snowsuits, proven to decrease a very low probability of risk now to the extent that there is not an increased risk from the implementation of belts?
We see a lot of other issues that arise from using belts, other than the loss of efficiency. There is the possibility that kids are not clipped in properly. That causes more distress to us than the possibility of a potential accident at some point in the future, because we have 24 million riders a year in our system. To have to monitor the belting of each one of those riders to ensure that they are properly belted in, in the event of even a minor accident—because they do happen—would be a challenge. Then we'd also be increasing the potential for injury in minor accidents because they're wearing belts, whereas today they wouldn't have an injury.
So that's the testing, really, that we're looking for. Does the implementation of the belts lead to greater risks? If it doesn't, and if it actually is proven to lower risk, then great. We would say, “It definitely makes the bus safer. It's worth it to implement belts.” However, that data is not available for us right now.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
This also seems to be an issue that has come up even from our very first conversations with the Transportation Safety Board. It collects data only on bus mishaps involving another federally regulated mode, like a railroad train, etc. It would appear that the data may be out there, but nobody's responsible for aggregating it and teaching us what we need to know.
I'll now go to the issue of ejection, being ejected from a vehicle—a school bus or any other vehicle. This, obviously, increases the risk of very severe injury and fatality, but you've also raised the issue of entrapment in the vehicle. Are we looking at a kind of Hobson's choice here?
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
I don't understand that expression, sorry.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Well, it's just a no-win. Are we looking at a no-win situation, damned if we do and damned if we don't? We avoid the threat of entrapment by not having people strapped in, but at the same time we're increasing the likelihood of ejection.
12:15 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
I think that, as any insurance actuary would say, there's a probability of risk that needs to be assessed. What is the likelihood of an accident occurring where an ejection might happen? We have some data and some basis for that, but we have very little data that has been collected to see if there is an entrapment issue. We're looking at it anecdotally. There's no doubt about that. Really, what my presentation is about is saying that we need to collect more data. Let's test this out before we arbitrarily put in seat belts, which could actually be leading to other issues; then data would tell us, oh, that idea probably wasn't very good.
We want to at least be able to say that the studies have been done under the Canadian environment, with kids who are in snowsuits. What is the likelihood of injury or risk to those kids because they're wearing seat belts versus not wearing the seat belt and then potentially getting ejected? There's a balance there.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Kids have been actually teaching their parents about seat belts for a long time, because they learned about them in school and the importance of them, and it would be the kids who would be telling folks, “Hey, Dad, put your seat belt on.”
Are you worried that a lack of compliance among kids is really that much of an issue, given that they've actually championed for all of society the use of safety belts?
12:20 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
I think by the time they're nine or 10 years old, they can be champions. I don't think a three-and-a-half-year-old or a four-year-old who doesn't attach their own belt in their own vehicle with the mom there is going to be able to do it in a bus. Manually, their dexterity is not there, which then requires another adult to actually do that work for them.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Kyriaco, for being with us.
Following on from what Mr. Hardie just mentioned, I'll tell you, without telling you my age, that I was born at a time when seat belts didn't exist. We didn't ask ourselves any questions in this sense, but over time, it became obvious. In fact, it is the younger generations who have always applied the changes. The rule existed, but we were reluctant.
Could we consider a different system for very young children who are supposedly unable to buckle their seat belts themselves? Based on your experience, at what age would you determine that a child can buckle a seat belt on a school bus?
12:20 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
I used to be a teacher. That was before I even started working in the transport sector. In my opinion, at the age of nine or ten, they are able to fasten their seat belts and adjust the one that passes over their shoulders. These are really two steps.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Overall, we could say that there should be a different approach for the primary level and the secondary level.
12:20 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
Yes, but the same bus is used to transport high school students and then elementary school students. We cannot change seat belts or the approach.
April 4th, 2019 / 12:20 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
I understand that, but if there were seat belts, we could apply different standards—for example, with respect to the number of passengers on the bus—for secondary and primary schools. These are only avenues for reflection to try to find a solution. It seems to me that, more and more, the seat belt is becoming a matter of course. However, I understand the problems associated with this. Perhaps, for the time being, we shouldn't target the economic contingencies that would hinder security, but rather see how we adapt budgets to the standards that we consider essential.
If these buses, which carry both secondary and elementary school students and can seat three students per bench, operate at 50 kilometres per hour in urban areas and an accident occurs, we know that the impact will be relatively contained. However, these are exactly the same school buses that carry our students—I too used to be a teacher—when they go to see a play in another municipality, when they go to play winter sports or when they go on a summer outing. These are the same buses that take the highway.
Do you think this could be another avenue? It could be determined that, for urban traffic, things can be thought of in one way, but that, for all cases where the vehicle is travelling at high speed on the motorway, seat belts must be worn.
12:20 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
We should really look at the statistics to see if there have been more fatal accidents or other—
12:25 p.m.
General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer, Ottawa Student Transportation Authority
Please.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
If you organize a snow lesson with your elementary school students, do you stick to the standard of three students per bench, even if the trip is long?
