The transportation committee’s chairman says his committee will vote Monday on a bill that would require seat belts on school buses.
The committee is scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. in room 1C of the legislative office building.
The bill, House Bill 5033, calls for the installation of lap-and-shoulder, or three-point, seat belts on school buses by January 1, 2011. It would also allow the commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the registration of any bus that does not have seat belts installed.
Rep. Antonio Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, the committee’s co-chairman, proposed the bill after 16-year-old Vikas Parikh, of Rocky Hill, died as a result of a January bus crash on I-84.
Parikh’s family and friends came to the legislative office building last month to testify in favor of Guerrera’s bill. They say seat belts would have saved Parikh’s life.
Only six states have passed laws requiring seat belts on school buses, including New York and New Jersey. In Connecticut, 23 bills require belts on buses have been proposed over the past two decades, but none have made it out of committee.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted this year showed that three out of four state residents support requiring seat belts on school buses.
Groups, such as the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the Connecticut School Transportation Association, oppose the bill. They worry about the costs associated with putting seat belts on school buses and say they are unnecessary because of compartmentalization — the cushy, high-backed seats that are placed close together on buses to absorb impact.