NHTSA head wants seat belts on all school buses

A school bus.
(Image credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is changing its stance on seat belts, saying for the first time that all school buses need to have three-point belts.

Previously, the NHTSA said buses were safe without seat belts, and it was too expensive to retrofit them. "Is this a change in position? Yes," NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said Sunday. "But it is consistent with NHTSA's role as the guardian of safety on America's roads. It is consistent with decades of progress in raising seat belts in the minds of the public from novelty to nuisance to 'the car doesn't move until I hear that click.' Seat belts are icons of safety."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.