CONTRIBUTED PHOTO The debate about seat belts on buses has been ongoing for several years, but the recent and deadly bus crash in Chattanooga, Tenn. has seen the subject resurface. One central Iowa bus driver, Robert Kruse, said seat belts wouldn’t help make buses safer.

CONRAD — Former law enforcement officer and current Beaman-Conrad-Liscomb-Union-Whitten school bus driver Robert Kruse has seen many horrible sights, including traffic accidents.

Now, as a bus driver for whom childrens’ well being is a priority, Kruse said he is against the idea of implementing seat belts on school buses. He said the deadly school bus crash in Chattanooga, Tenn. in November could have seen more casualties if there had been seat belts installed.

“I have been a bus driver for BCLUW School District for 15 years… Before bus driving, I was a law enforcement officer for 25 years,” Kruse said in a letter to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head Dr. Mark Rosekind. “During that time, I was involved in three car accidents (where) the car burned on impact.”

He said the scenes of carnage still haunt him, and said not putting seat belts on buses could prevent bus accident victims from being trapped in such a situation.

In the letter, Kruse goes on to describe two scenarios in which a bus tips over with a driver and children inside. The variable: one scenario doesn’t include seat belts, the other does.

“If anyone sustains a neck or back injury, you will be able to have the victim remain on the bus (and) stabilize them until emergency help arrives, then remove them,” Kruse wrote of the seat belt-less scenario. “Now take the same bus with installed belts… you will need to unbuckle each seat belt, providing you can get to each passenger.

“What if you do manage to climb out of your seat with an 8-foot drop?” Kruse continued. “You have an incredible life-saving rescuing job to do in a very short amount of time.”

He said it is much harder to evacuate passengers off the bus in case of such an accident if seat belts are being used.

Rosekind has voiced his support for having school buses installed with seat belts, saying they “save lives,” according to a November 2015 NBC article. In an interview with ABC News later that month, Rosekind said he was looking for ways to get seat belts on buses.

Local school district officials said there isn’t much data on whether seat belts really make school buses any safer.

“I really don’t have an opinion,” said Marshalltown Schools Transportation Director Don Meyer on seat belts in school buses. “There are pros and cons to each.”

He said it’s possible seat belts help in cases of front- or rear-end collisions while students are on a bus. However, if a bus tips or flips over, like in Kruse’s example, he said seat belts could be a dangerous obstacle.

“If (the bus) was laying on it’s side, all the students on the side in the air would be hanging by the seat belts,” he said.

Curt Sawyer, East Marshall director of transportation, said seat belts may also be a cause for distraction for bus drivers.

“How are you going to keep the kids wearing them (seat belts)?” he said, adding kids may unbuckle after the bus has started moving. “What happens if the kids don’t stay buckled in?”

He said children may also play with or hit one another with the belt buckles while riding.

Like Meyer, Sawyer said the belts could help in certain scenarios.

“I’m sure they would help in a front-end collision,” he said. However, he added in any event where bus evacuation is necessary, the belts would make the process take longer.

Meyer and Sawyer said there isn’t a lot of hard data on seat belts in buses because they aren’t in widespread use.

Both said buses are among the safety ways to travel on the road. The NHTSA website says school buses have built-in protection from many types of crashes because of their size.

“I don’t really have an opinion either way,” Sawyer said, echoing Meyer. “As long as kids are sitting in their seat properly, (safety) is what the buses are built for.”