3 Bills Aimed at Safer Buses Gain Backing

State lawmakers, reacting to a series of fatal accidents over the last 13 months, approved three bills Thursday designed to promote the use of seat belts in buses and remove unsafe school buses from the road.

By a vote of 47 to 22, the Assembly approved legislation that would require the installation of seat belts on private charter buses, such as the one that crashed into a river in Mono County, killing 21 elderly people from the Los Angeles area.

The Senate, meanwhile, voted 27 to 2 to place on the Nov. 4 ballot a $100-million bond issue that would help school districts buy new buses to replace vehicles that do not meet federal safety standards.

The Senate, by a vote of 27 to 3, also approved and sent to Gov. George Deukmejian a watered-down bill that would provide $200,000 for a study to determine whether seat belts would improve the safety of students aboard buses.

Save Lives

Assemblyman Dave Elder (D-Long Beach), who sponsored the proposal to require installation of safety belts on charter buses, said his bill would have saved lives and reduced injuries in the Walker River bus crash May 30 that killed the 21 Southern Californians returning from a Reno gambling trip.

“If they were strapped in, more people would have survived the crash and those who were strapped in would have been less seriously injured,” Elder said.

Elder was originally prompted to introduce the measure by the death of Kristin Baker, a popular Long Beach high school senior who was killed on a school skiing trip in December, when a chartered Greyhound bus in which she was a passenger overturned on an icy Utah road, throwing her through a window.

High Cost

The bill would require all charter buses on California highways to be equipped with seat belts but would not require riders to use them. It would also require buses to drive in the extreme right lane, except when passing, which Elder said would promote safety by forcing buses to travel more slowly.

Elder acknowledged that his bill could face stiff opposition in the Senate, where legislators have been reluctant to approve other seat belt measures because of what they view as the high installation cost.

In a separate action, the Senate agreed to put on the ballot the $100-million bond measure to replace school buses that do not meet federal safety standards enacted in 1977, but which have been largely ignored.

Called “rolling coffins” by some legislators, these buses are considered unsafe because they do not have the high seat backs, seat padding, strengthened frame and other safety features required by the federal government on new models.

The bill was prompted partly by a June, 1985, accident in which sixth-grader Sean Purcell of Elk Grove was killed. He died when the 1963 school bus in which he was riding crashed into a stalled milk truck on a freeway north of San Jose.

“You’ve got 6,500 school buses in California that aren’t safe, that don’t meet the 1977 federal safety standards,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), author of the measure. “This money will help upgrade them and protect children.”

Katz had originally proposed spending $200 million on bus replacement, but the amount was cut in half by the Senate. The $100 million would be matched by school districts on a sliding scale, with the smallest districts paying 10% of the cost and the larger ones footing up to 50% of the bill.

Deukmejian’s office said that he is likely to oppose the bill if it reaches him. The governor’s Department of Finance does not support the legislation.

After vetoing a bus replacement bill in 1985, Deukmejian earlier this year proposed buying new buses with $100 million from a fund earmarked for energy savings projects. However, the Legislature rejected the expenditure, saying it would be an improper use of the money.

Final Approval

The Senate also gave final approval to a measure by Assemblywoman Gloria Molina (D-Los Angeles) that would provide for a California Highway Patrol study to determine whether seat belts would enhance school bus safety.

In its original form, the legislation would have required the installation of seat belts on school buses purchased after June, 1987. However, the Senate reduced the bill to a study, fearing that the estimated cost--as much as $1,800 a bus--would place too great a burden on school districts.

Molina said she hopes that the study will enable seat belt backers to renew their push next year for legislation requiring their installation.