Bill to mandate seatbelts on busses moves forward, with hefty price-tag

MARYLAND – One of the final bills to make it to crossover day – is a bill aimed at mandating seatbelts for all school buses in Maryland.

The bill would mandate the buses be upgraded to have bench seatbelts by 2027- and place that cost on the school systems. Delegate Sheree Sample Hughes says that cost could be a real problem on the shore; where the districts do not own the busses and instead license them from contractors.

She tells us, that the seatbelts would also mean fewer children would be able to fit on the buses, in a time when there is a shortage of busses and drivers.

“While certainly, safety is paramount in the lives of everyone and the parents, children, etc., the price tag literally for the counties would be about $38.5 million is what is estimated to be statewide,” she said adding that those costs on top of the blueprint,” Del. Sample Hughes said.

Those upgrades would impact the nearly 7 thousand school buses in service across Maryland, if the bill were to pass it would make Maryland only the 7th state in the nation to have the requirement.