Where are those seat belts on school buses?

You have to take your hat off to the committed people in the Coffs Harbour area who keep reminding our pollies that children (and others) travelling by bus are not x-class citizens who are unworthy of protection. They repeatedly voice concerns for children's safety. Where are our local MPs' voices on this important issue? Of course, they are mute, yet again! 



Letter to the editor (Coffs Advocate, 18 August, 2012)

It is a shocking fact that transport laws do not protect our children travelling to and from school on outdated buses lacking seatbelts on one of the most dangerous sections of the NSW Highway; between Macksville and Urunga.

As someone working at local hospitals, I am only too familiar with the tragic results of motor accidents.

Why is it drivers of cars can be fined for not restraining their children in seatbelts, yet these same children can travel unrestrained at high speeds on school buses?

With buses only needing to comply with Australian Design Rule 58, which was passed in 1986, it is now a matter of urgency to revise this rule, which does not even require padded, high-backed seats, and was never intended to protect pupils from crashes or even sudden braking in high-speed zones.

Children are often forced to stand in the aisles of buses, with no protection at all.

Please voice your concerns to: The Hon. Gladys Berejiklian MP, Minister for Transport, email: mailto:office@berejiklian.minister.nsw.gov.au

Judith Kirwood

Image credit: The Daily Examiner

Hey, Minister Berejiklian, heed the call for safer travel on school buses

Come on, Minister Berejiklian, get out and listen to what the community is repeatedly saying: Improve the safety of travellers on school buses.

Coffs Harbour school principal, Mr Michael Carniato, is the latest contributor to the letters columns in the Coffs Coast Advocate calling upon the Minister to lift her game and do something constructive by announcing the outcomes of the NSW School Bus Safety Committee's consultative processes.

Mr Carniato politely reminded Minister Berejiklian that the chair of the NSW School Bus Safety Committee, which was set up by the Minister, told a community meeting in Coffs Harbour in November 2011 the outcomes of this committee's process would be made public in the second quarter of 2012.

Well, Minister Berejiklian, today's Sunday 24 June so that means there are just six, yes 6, days left in the second quarter.

Get on with it, Minister, and announce the outcomes.

Here's the complete text of Mr Carniato's letter.

School bus fear

Last week's state budget failed to deliver the funding needed to complete the Pacific Highway upgrade by 2016.

While we wait for a safer road to be built, we have many old and unsafe school buses travelling at high speed on the highway. These buses were not built to withstand the 20g forces likely to be experienced in a high-speed crash.

They are up to 25 years old and were built before the legislation introduced for all Australian coaches after the horrific bus crashes near Clybucca and Cowper that killed 55 people.

Why doesn't this legislation apply to school children who travel up to 200 times a year in a bus? Many of these older school buses have hard, low-backed seats which were banned in 1977 by the US federal government.

Buses with safe seats and seatbelts are needed on the road and all children should be seated, not standing or sitting in a bus aisle.

At a community meeting in Coffs Harbour in November 2011 the chair of the NSW School Bus Safety Committee, set up by the Transport Minister, announced the outcomes of this committee's process would be made in the second quarter of 2012.

We are now waiting for Minister Berejiklian's announcement.

Mr Michael Carniato
Principal, John Paul College

Image credit: The Daily Examiner

Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition meets with NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis

From the Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition Inc. website on Sunday, 29 April 2012:

MEETING WITH CHRIS GULAPTIS MP ABOUT COAL SEAM GAS MINING

On 26^th April representatives of the Clarence Alliance Against Coal Seam Gas met with State MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis to explain their concerns about coal seam gas (CSG) mining. The representatives were John Edwards, Irene Daly and Lisa Hunter. Below is John Edwards' report on this meeting.
We started out with my reading a letter (see below) about our concerns about CSG mining.

In response to that Mr Gulaptis tried to reassure us that the Government was "considering" the CSG issue. He pointed also to State Upper House and Federal Inquiries, and that we should all wait for the outcomes of those deliberations. He assured us that the party room discussions on CSG were all about three things - protecting water, getting a better deal for landowners, and protecting our food production. We asked if the "better deal" gave landowners the option to say "no", which he said was a very good question. However, he avoided a direct reply to that saying that landowners need to be better compensated with stronger access agreements in favour of the landowner.

Later I asked if he could add climate change to the Government’s list of priority concerns, but he clearly does not believe that climate change is happening, and stated that no tidal measurements had been taken over time to prove that sea levels were actually rising. I think evidence on this should be presented to him.

In response to the question of when the moratorium on fracking would be removed, he ventured the opinion that it would be extended, quoting party room 'feeling'.

Mr Gulaptis said he had viewed the DVDs given to him, and there were some things he disagreed with, but there wasn't time for him to enlarge on that other than the sea level rise matter. However, he said he felt the North Coast would prove to be unviable for coal seam gas mining because of the small size of the average property. The miners would have to negotiate with too many landowners with potentially lengthy mediation and possibly court processes.

In terms of the issues raised in our statement, he agreed that most of the concerns were legitimate, but claimed he had seen no evidence that any aquifers had been damaged, but he would like to see that evidence if we can give it to him.

Irene spoke very strongly of her mistrust of the system, with which Mr. Gulaptis disagreed, citing that in all the years as a surveyor in the development business he had not seen evidence of it. It would have been good to have had the time to discuss the issue of "vision impaired ecologists" that we exposed over the Shannon Creek dam EIS.

It was really good to have youth involved, in the person of Lisa, who made her concerns for the future clear.

Mr Gulaptis said he would appreciate us sending him any evidence relating to CSG. Again I asked if evidence of climate change would be helpful.

Ha also said he would be prepared to address a community meeting on the CSG issue, but he's booked out for about two months.

In conclusion I have to say that his responses were predictable, and not all that encouraging.

LETTER TO CHRIS GULAPTIS MP

John Edwards read this letter to Chris Gulaptis at the beginning of their meeting. The letter was signed by John (on behalf of the Clarence Environment Centre), Irene Daly (on behalf of the Gumbaynggirr Nation) and Lisa Hunter (on behalf of Clarence Alliance Against CSG)

We are concerned that the mining companies seeking to exploit coal seam gas and other forms of unconventional gas in the Clarence-Moreton Basin cannot guarantee that the following impacts will not occur:

• damage to groundwater resources, including the depletion of aquifers;
• methane leaks from wells during or after use, leading to increased fire hazards;
• emissions of volatile organic compounds that are detrimental to human health;
• escape of salty or toxic waste water into waterways;
• leakage of waste water or other pollutants into groundwater; and
• increased seismic activity resulting from the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

We are also concerned that the mining of coal seam and other forms of unconventional gas:

• will lead to the industrialisation of rural and bushland environments;
• will degrade and destroy Aboriginal cultural sites;
• will cause massive fragmentation of native bushland and wildlife habitat, leading to detrimental impacts on threatened species and ecological communities;
• will impose unacceptable impacts on landowners and their neighbours through increased levels of noise, dust and smells, all leading to social disruption, and physical and psychological health impacts;
• will create downward pressure on land prices, both in the short and long term;
• will disrupt and divide communities;
• will impact on roads and bridges, without paying any rates to councils to repair the damage to local roads;
• will, through increased traffic volumes, have negative road safety implications;
• will put significant pressure on public waste disposal facilities; and
• will not provide a single cent in royalties to the people of NSW in the first 5 years of a well's production and not pay full royalties until after 10 years of a well's production.

The burning of gas contributes to global warming through the emission of carbon dioxide. Fugitive emissions of unburnt methane during exploration, extraction, processing and transportation via lengthy pipelines also significantly contribute to global warming, as methane is potent greenhouse gas, with a higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide (70 times greater when measured over a 20 year period). When these fugitive emissions are considered, burning unconventional gas for electricity is worse then burning coal.

The International Energy Agency has identified that, by continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels, the world is currently on track to be 6 degrees warmer by 2100 (IEA Outlook 2012), a catastrophic level of climate change. And yet the Australian and NSW Governments continue to support the expansion of the gas and coal industries, and fail to plan for a transition to a low carbon economy powered by renewable and zero emission sources of energy.

Given all of the above, we strongly believe that the mining of coal seam gas and other forms of unconventional gas cannot be justified under any circumstances and must be stopped.

We urge you to take this message to your colleagues in the NSW Government.

Another call for seatbelts on school buses

Two school buses collided in Maclean yesterday morning, resulting in an 11-year-old child being taken to hospital with suspected neck injuries. Another eight students were treated at the scene.

The Greens transport spokeswoman, Cate Faehrmann, will today give notice of a private members bill in which buses on some rural routes would need to be fitted with seatbelts. The routes would travel on unsealed roads or roads or highways with a speed limit greater than 80km/h.

While it's not clear if the measures proposed would have alleviated yesterday's incident that occurred before school in Maclean, the call is loud and clear: MPs, extract the digit and move to upgrade the safety of school bus travellers now!

Pollies can roll out statistics till the cows come home about how much safer bus travel is compared with other forms of motorised transport but that will not alter one simple fact ... it's only a matter of time!

Good to see Ms Faehrmann's move!

The $64 question locals in the electorate of Clarence will have on the tips of their tongues will be: And what is our local MP, Chris Gulaptis, who resides a stone's throw (okay, okay, so he lives over the hill and a few streets away from the site of yesterday's crash) prepared to do about improving bus safety by having school buses fitted with seat belts?

Mr Gulaptis, it's over to you.

Sources: The Daily Examiner, The Sydney Morning Herald

Pic credit: The Daily Examiner

A first: seat-belted bus to run on a local school route in the Coffs Harbour area

High school students travelling by bus between Glenreagh and Coffs Harbour will now have the added protection of seat belts.

The Coffs Coast Advocate reported that Sawtell Coaches, which operates a fleet of school buses in the Coffs area has purchased a new bus fitted with seat-belts, GPS tracking, an electronic tacograph and surveillance cameras.

The manager of Sawtell Coaches, Darren Williams, said the company had made a commercial, possibly controversial, decision given the NSW Government's Bus Safety Review had not yet been completed.

"We made the decision because we knew this service was on the government's lists of dangerous rural bus routes," Mr Williams said.
"We will be monitoring students' behaviour very closely and taking a hard line with any who do not comply with the instructions to wear the seat belts.
"Students who are moving around will be given three warnings and then be told 'to take a holiday from the bus'."

Valla parent Jan Gill, who has been campaigning for more safety on school buses, said the new bus was a welcome initiative.
 "We all hope this marks the beginning of a new trend with other bus companies, especially those that travel on the highway," Ms Gill said

Ms Gill's letter to the editor of The Coffs Advocate is below:

Belts on buses

I commend Darren Williams, manager of Sawtell Coaches, for buying a new, safe bus fitted with seatbelts for a school bus route identified as high risk.

This highly responsible and community-minded initiative is greatly appreciated by parents, who would like to see all school buses travelling on dangerous routes upgraded so they suit the conditions.

The horrific crash at Urunga earlier this month and the heavy rain we are now experiencing highlight the risks faced by those who live and travel in this region, particularly on the Pacific Hwy.

I would like to see Busways management take the same approach Mr Williams has taken to keep children safe.

Busways has several school buses travelling south of Urunga on the highway.

It's time they replaced the school buses that have low-backed unpadded seats, with vehicles that have safety features fit for our conditions, including seatbelts.

Jan Gill, Valla Beach

Source: The Coffs Coast Advocate