Connecticut law offers incentives to install school bus seat belts

From The Hartford Courant: Connecticut Gov. M.Jodi Rell has held a signing ceremony for a new law that provides a financial incentive for towns to install lap-and-shoulder seat belts in school buses. The legislation was short of what many had hoped for: a mandate that lap and shoulder belts be installed on all school buses. Lawmakers had introduced such a bill, but it faced an uphill fight.

APRIL 2010....from The Hartford Courant: A bill that would have required seat belts on school buses in Connecticut has been stalled, and lawmakers now are calling for a study to assess whether a safety belt requirement is needed. The bill had called for putting lap-and-shoulder, or three-point, seat belts on all new buses purchased in 2012 or later. The study, which would be submitted to lawmakers by Oct. 1, would include information on safety issues and the cost to municipalities. The legislation was proposed after a 16-year-old student was killed earlier this year in a school bus accident.JANUARY 2010...from The Hartford Courant: Vikas Parikh, a junior at both Rocky Hill High School and the Greater Hartford Academy of Math and Science in Hartford, Conn.,was killed Saturday after a school bus collided with a car on a Hartford highway, crashed through a guardrail and slid down a 20-foot embankment. Vikas was one of 16 members of the robotics team from the academy traveling to a robotics competition when the accident occurred on Interstate 84.