It is well documented that seat belts can save lives in automobile accidents, and some people consider the lack of passenger restraints on buses to be a safety hazard. However, many technical experts argue against seat belts because lap/shoulder belts cannot be installed on buses. The effectiveness of lap belts alone is questioned, and there is evidence that they may actually induce injury. Arguments for and against seat belts on buses are reviewed in this paper, which focuses on intercity coaches. The potential effectiveness of lap belts on intercity coaches was assessed by examining statistics and reports for severe bus accidents in the california highway patrol "other bus" (nonschool bus) category. The potential effectiveness of lap belts was assessed after classifying accidents by type because lapbelts are not considered effective in head-on or rear-end collisions. Lap belts were judged to have potential effectiveness in 15 to 25% of the 1975 through 1984 accidents. Two problems were encountered in applying the available data. First, buses were not classified by body type in the data base and, second, many accidents occurred in the "hit object" classification where the direction of impact was notspecified. To facilitate future study it is recommended that statistics for bus accidents identify the bus by body type rather than by function and that records for hit object accidents identify the direction of impact on the bus and the depth of penetration by the object. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1229, Economics, finance, planning, and administration.
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