AMHERST — Like school buses, when passengers in almost every state ride motor coaches, they don’t have to use seatbelts and may have no means of buckling up.
Sara’s Wish Foundation, which aims to reduce deaths on roads and highways, recently landed an $83,000 federal grant that will allow it to work with coach lines, including Peter Pan and Greyhound in New England, to identify solutions to improve seatbelt usage on their buses. The work will be in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts Transportation Center.
The Amherst organization is part of a nationwide effort to eliminate fatalities on American roads by 2050.
Anne Schewe, president of Sara’s Wish Foundation, said that the Safe System Innovation Grant comes from the Road to Zero Coalition, a joint effort of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Safety Council.
“Now we can find out why people are not wearing seatbelts and make a difference in people’s lives,” Schewe said.
Schewe said the idea is to create an education campaign kit that operators can use to convince passengers that seatbelts can save lives and reduce the severity of injuries in case of crashes.
“This, in turn, is expected to lead to increases in motor coach seatbelt usage,” Schewe said.
Among the elements of the campaign kit will be announcements made by drivers, informational videos using a monitor on the bus or an app for people’s smartphones, promotional banners at the entrance to the coach and in the terminal waiting area and text or email messages that passengers can receive.
Sara’s Wish Foundation was created by Anne and Charles Schewe after their daughter, Sara, died in a bus crash in India in 1996 while in a study abroad program. Sara Schewe, 20, attended Amherst public schools and graduated from Deerfield Academy, and was participating in the “Semester at Sea” program sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh.
Anne Schewe said her organization will also work with the state of California, which passed legislation that mandates all passengers in motor coaches wear seatbelts. Passengers and drivers can be fined for failure to be wear seatbelts, with certain exceptions.
Michel Knodler, director of the UMass Transportation Center, said that new buses are required to provide seatbelts, but current use by passengers only hovers around one percent.
“The need to focus on promoting seatbelt usage, especially along our busy, high-speed highways, is of paramount importance,” Knodler said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
