A bill that would require lap-and-shoulder, or three-point, seat belts on school buses was passed by the transportation committee Monday 29-7. <\/p>\n
The bill would require all new school buses to have seat belts if they are purchased in 2012 or after. This is a change from the original language of the bill, which would have required all school buses to have seat belts by January 2011. <\/p>\n
Monday’s vote marked the first time that a bill requiring seat belts on school buses has made it out of of the transportation committee. Twenty-three other seat belt bills have been proposed over the past two decades, but they failed to get enough support. <\/p>\n
Rep. Antonio Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, co-chairman of the committee, proposed this year’s seat belt bill after Vikas Parikh, 16, of Rocky Hill, died as a result of a January school bus crash on I-84. Parkih’s family and friends came to the legislative office building in February to testify in favor of the bill. They believe that a seat belt would have saved Parikh’s life. <\/p>\n
Only six states have laws that require seat belts on school buses, including New York and New Jersey. Connecticut could become the seventh. <\/p>\n
Guerrera said that while his committee voted on the bill Monday, it is still a work in progress, and several committee members said they voted in favor of the bill because they trust that more work will be done. <\/p>\n
Lawmakers like Sen. Donald DeFronzo, D-New Britain, the other committee co-chairman, said he voted in favor of the bill to continue the conversation about safety.<\/p>\n
“There is no more important issue than the issue of child safety,” DeFronzo said. <\/p>\n
Those who voted against the bill said they did so because of financial concerns. The state is dealing with a budget deficit and cities and towns are struggling, they said, adding that they worry that requiring seat belts on school buses is an unfunded mandate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill that would require lap-and-shoulder, or three-point, seat belts on school buses was passed by the transportation committee Monday 29-7. The bill would require all new school buses to have seat belts if they are purchased in 2012 or after. This is a change from the original language of the bill, which would have required all school buses to have seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}