JEDDAH, 15 September 2005 — At least nine expatriate middle-school students of Al-Mawarid International School escaped unhurt yesterday afternoon, when their school bus crashed into another vehicle.
“Neither the students nor the driver were injured in the traffic collision. Another school bus was immediately dispatched to the scene to pickup the students and take them home,” said Abdul Rahim Fayez, the school’s chairman.
The police did not detain the driver as both he and Al-Mawarid International School were insured, and no injuries were sustained in either vehicle.
Arab News saw the wrecked bus shortly after the accident. It was parked out of sight, two streets away from the school. There were only two seatbelts in the 15-passenger, 1992 Nissan model bus. One was for the driver, and the other, for the front-seat passenger. There were no seatbelts available for the students.
“This is an old bus that came from the manufacturer without seatbelts. The school recently bought a fleet of late-model Mitsubishi buses that are equipped with seatbelts for every student. We try to use those the most.
“I will be issuing a directive to all our drivers to ensure that all students from now on, are belted in their seats whenever they are on the buses,” Fayez said.
Al-Mawarid International School has five other 1992 same-model, Nissan buses also without seatbelts.
“We were in the process of retiring the older buses already, but we will now expedite. We shall immediately start looking into either installing seatbelts in the Nissans we still have, or trading them in for newer buses with seatbelts,” Fayez explained.
There are no laws in the Kingdom dictating seatbelt usage for bus passengers.
In May of 2004, seven girls and a teacher from the International Indian School of Jeddah were killed and 16 others injured on the Makkah-Jeddah Highway when the driver lost control and slammed into a concrete pillar.
