HOUSTON – Why don’t all Texas School buses have seatbelts?
When Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 693 into law in 2017, Texas became one of only a handful of states in the country to pass some variation of a school bus seat belt law.
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The law was spurred in part by a tragic accident that left two Houston Independent School District students dead in 2015, when an Houston Independent School District bus plunged from an overpass. Two Furr High School students lost their lives. Then-Texas State Sen. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston authored SB 693 and championed the legislation until it became law.
Despite the school bus seat belt law, many Texas school buses remain belt-less.
That’s because the legislation requires three-point seat belts on all buses that are model year 2018 or later. The law does not require Texas school districts to retrofit older busses with seat belts and allows school districts to opt out of the three-point seat belt requirement if a school board determines that its budget does not permit the district to purchase a bus that is equipped with seat belts.