The topic of the February Citywide Parent Council meeting was transportation and safety. One issue that came up was seat belts on school buses. Parents who insist that their children buckle up every time they enter a car cannot understand why the same children remain unbelted in school buses. It turns out that there's a good reason. The National Transportation Safety Board and other similar agencies have long recommended against seat belts on school buses. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the size and weight of the bus makes it far safer in a crash. The interior design of the school bus follows a concept called "compartmentalization" in which the seating area is a protected, padded compartment created by closely spaced seats with high backs, padded on both front and back and strongly anchored to the floor. In a crash, the child is protected by the padding of this compartment, much like an egg within an egg crate. While their are few fatal accidents involving school buses, the majority of them occur in the bus's "loading zone" - the area the child moves through when getting on and off the bus. Safety experts recommend that the money that would be spent installing seat belts would be better spent making getting on and off the bus safer.