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I was asked to elaborate on this topic in another forum post https://westseattleblog.com/forum/topic/idiotic-motorist, here is my response:
There are a few reasons why most big school buses do not have seatbelts and this driver endorses all of them. There might be more that I am not aware of, however I strongly feel these 3 are enough.
1) In the event of a water-landing or fire aboard the bus and all the occupants need to evacuate quickly there most likely will be a few younger children who cannot undo their seatbelts and will need assistance.
So imagine that a majority of the students aboard are evacuating the bus through any of the doors thus filling the aisle and preventing the driver from making his/her way to those children in need.
Fortunately for this driver who is in his mid-50’s, I have the capability to crawl across the tops of the seats to make my way to those needing my help and will do so, then once I stick my arm down into their lap and undo the buckle I will instantly get a pair of arms clinging to me for dear life as any young child will do. (How many drivers do you think also have the same physical capabilities AND the wherewithal to do so?)
So with the first child freed and hanging onto me, that leaves only one other free arm and most likely more than one still needing my help.
2) As we are fully aware, there are those students who don’t always abide by the rules, so then we could have one or two, or more who won’t buckle their seatbelts thus creating more ‘battles’ for the driver to have to deal with while still trying to navigate their 40’ long, 12-13 ton vehicle through our narrow neighborhood streets.
Dealing with the safety issues (staying seated IN your seat, nothing but air or water in your mouth, keep your bodies out of the aisle, etc.) are paramount while driving, which is enough to have to handle, let alone trying to talk or verbally force Billy or Bonnie to buckle their seatbelt. Heaven forbid we should ‘touch’ them while trying to do so!!!!!
3) Then there are those students who are downright mean or vengeful who could use the seatbelt buckle as a weapon to swing and hit their neighboring student(s) with. Or secretly tie another student or his/her backpack with the seatbelt creating an additional fiasco at that child’s stop, or during the need for an emergency evacuation.
***
I trust (hope) this helps with your understanding as to why I personally endorse the ‘no seatbelt’s’ on big school buses policy.
As long as every driver is diligent about consistently enforcing the safety rules on their bus, seatbelts will not be needed. As long as parents do their job of teaching their children to respect those adults who hold an authoritative position over them*, then the safety rules will be MUCH easier to enforce.
*We all know that there are some adults in our world who will abuse this power, stay innocent when reading this portion as that is how it is intended.
Topic: Remembering Lolita
Don’t forget the free showing of Lolita: Slave to Entertainment, at the Admiral this Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
https://westseattleblog.com/2013/11/save-the-date-orca-movie-lolita-screening-at-admiral-theater/
If something is posted online and you can access it – sharing A LINK requires NO PERMISSION WHATSOEVER. You can publish the **link** – not the content of what is at the link but the LINK ITSELF – or send it to someone, or tweet it, or Facebook it, whatever.
However, the CONTENT of what is linked to – the words and/or images on the page that the link TAKES you to – may not be lifted without express permission, *unless* the site has a specific disclaimer/advisory saying that everything is open to public use, repurposing, whatever, which is fairly uncommon. The only exception: If the work was created by a public employee in the course of performing his/her duties. (This is why, for example, you will see us and other news organizations republish pictures of government facilities taken from gov’t websites.)
Again, I hope that’s clear. A link – the actual text such as
can be linked, sent, shared with impunity. Don’t ever let ANYONE tell you that you cannot *link* to something that is publicly visible. (We actually have had a couple people claim that over the years and it is laughable. If you don’t want someone to link to your webpage, then make it password protected.)
But you cannot just download a photo you find on a webpage and send it to someone, post it on a page, post it to social media, etc. That is copyright violation and out-and-out theft.
You technically are within your rights to right-click on a photo and send the resulting LINK to someone. However, as a content creator/publisher, I would say that’s not particularly ideal because it means you’re sending it without the context, without the credit, etc. And even if you send that photo-only link with the best of intentions, you can’t control what happens to it next place down the line; over the course of a couple months, a few years ago, both we and another news organization inadvertently published one photo each that was taken by a photographer from the other news organization – then redistributed as if it were somebody else’s work. We had photographed a local business owner; the local business lifted the photo from our site and posted it on social media without the link to the accompanying article putting the photo into context; somebody else lifted the photo off Facebook and sent it to the other news organization along with an announcement relating to the business! Imagine our surprise when we saw our photo uncredited on another commercial news website.
On the flip side, we got an announcement about a local arts event, asked if there was a relevant photo of preparations for the event, and the organizers sent us several. Unfortunately, they had attached to the e-mail not only photos they took, but photos taken by another news photographer who had apparently sent them copies in addition to publishing some on their own site. The entire group of photos was represented to us as taken by volunteer photographers on behalf of the arts organization, so we chose one and then were startled to get a note from the other news publication saying, that photo was taken by our photographer, take it down immediately.
Sorry to digress. I do think the idea of sending someone a link to the WSB Flickr gallery is a good one:
The photos are almost entirely taken by other contributors, each of whom is linked to their photo, and we opened it with a disclaimer that posting to the group means permission is given for us to publish the photo if we choose. Flickr does have a setting where people can disable downloads if they choose.
Hope that helps a bit.
Tracy
You know, with all of the discussions, research, and speculation here on WSB over the years, regarding the source of the hum, I don’t recall this bit of speculation being considered……
West Seattle, Washington
18 Friday
