Farmingdale bus crash spurred state law mandating seat belt use but older buses don't have them

A New York law intended to improve charter bus passenger safety does not apply to hundreds of older buses operating in the state and has never been used by state police to write a ticket, Newsday found.

The charter bus seat belt law was passed in response to the 2023 crash of a charter bus carrying the Farmingdale High School marching band that killed two beloved educators. Federal investigators determined that almost none of the passengers that day wore a seat belt, which would have reduced injuries to five people ejected from the bus.

But the law, which took effect in April 2025, doesn’t require that charter buses be equipped with seat belts, only that passengers wear them. Even that requirement is limited because it only applies to passengers on buses built after November 2016, the date after which federal rules required newly manufactured buses to be equipped with lap and shoulder belts for each driver and passenger seat.

That excludes 684 of 2,010 charter buses based in New York State — including 63 based on Long Island — that were built in 2015 or earlier, according to a Newsday analysis of state Department of Transportation data. The law does not apply to passengers on transit or intercity buses making scheduled runs. 

Challenges to enforcement

Beyond the state law’s limited scope, there are "practical challenges" to enforcement, according to state police. "Due to the height difference between a charter bus and a standard patrol vehicle, it is often difficult for Troopers to directly observe passenger seat belt compliance while a bus is in motion," Sgt. Jack Keller, a state police spokesperson, wrote in an email. That’s a problem, because enforcing the law requires "direct observation of a passenger not using a restraint."

Police can also conduct enforcement using "information obtained during an inspection or lawful stop," but those opportunities are limited, partly because federal regulations do not require charter buses to stop at all commercial vehicle checkpoints, Keller wrote. As a result, inspection opportunities are typically limited to unrelated traffic stops, or the start or end of a trip.

The enforcement challenges and lack of citations are "red flags, bells and whistles for the legislature that they need to revisit this thing" and evaluate the law’s effectiveness, said Fred W. Thiele Jr., the retired Sag Harbor assemblyman who was one of the law’s co-sponsors.

The law’s limitations became clear this March, when two buses slated to take Long Island high school cheerleading teams to upstate championships were found to lack passenger seat belts. The cheerleaders eventually made the trip on a belt-equipped bus. By unhappy coincidence, one of the teams was from Farmingdale High School.

The August 2025 crash of a tour bus returning from Niagara Falls to New York City also drew attention to the law. Five people were killed, and state police said it appeared most passengers were not wearing seat belts. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and has not released its final report.

Assemb. Bill Magnarelli, the Syracuse Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s transportation committee and sponsored the seat belt bill, said state lawmakers were limited by federal regulations.

"We could only deal with buses manufactured after 2016," he said in an interview this spring. "We can’t promulgate laws that affect interstate commerce if they are preempted by federal law. Obviously, charter buses go across state lines," making them subject to federal law.

Belt-equipped buses for LI schools

For schoolchildren in Farmingdale and other Long Island school districts, the significance of charter bus seat belt laws may be minimal because most districts and school boards already require that vendors provide them with belt-equipped buses, said Bob Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.

After the 2023 Farmingdale crash, most school boards and districts on Long Island "were proactive to make sure they had newer buses that came equipped with seat belts," and most also require district staffers to ensure that passengers on charter buses rented by districts wear their seat belts, he said.

In the March incident, which involved cheerleading teams from Farmingdale and Seaford, Newsday has previously reported that Coachman Luxury Transport, a bus company contracted by the Nassau County high school athletic association, ran out of buses and turned to a subcontractor, which provided the beltless buses.

Coachman did not respond to a request for comment. Nassau and Suffolk county high school athletic association officials said that the March incident with the cheerleaders’ buses appeared to be the first time in recent memory that Long Island schools had been provided with charter buses lacking seat belts and that it had not been repeated.

An estimated 5,800 Long Island student athletes rode charter buses to postseason competition last school year, according to association officials.

Reducing fatalities with seat belts

Bus travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation in the United States, but it is not without risk. In 2013, when federal regulators announced the requirement for seat belts in the long-distance intercity buses formally known as motor coaches, they noted that on average, 21 bus occupants were killed and 7,934 injured annually in crashes.

"Requiring seat belts could reduce fatalities by up to 44% and reduce the number of moderate to severe injuries by up to 45%," they wrote.

Overall, New York had 1,024 bus crashes in 2024, the last year for which full data was available from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. That was the third most in the nation, after Florida and Texas, though New York's totals have fallen in recent years.

While rates of passenger vehicle seat belt usage have risen in recent years to more than 90% in New York, nationally there are few comprehensive sources for passenger usage in buses, and academic studies vary widely in their findings. Researchers observed 1% compliance in a 2017 study of American airport shuttle bus passengers; a 2023 study of charter passengers in Sweden observed 92% compliance. 

No federal law requires seat belt use on motor coaches, while it has been required for cars and trucks since 1984 and for air travel since 1971. New York State requires that adults in most motor vehicles wear seat belts and that children use belts, booster seats or child safety seats. The state requires that large school buses built after July 1, 1987, be equipped with seat belts.

Magnarelli said the seat belt law he sponsored "does everything it can do" to improve safety requirements and that many of the older buses not covered by the law will age out of use in the coming years. A spokesperson for State Sen. Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester), the law’s Senate sponsor, did not respond to an interview request.

Peter Kurdock, general counsel with the nonprofit Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said that over time, seat belt requirements like New York’s tend to increase seat belt use, even if the underlying federal regulations are imperfect. "It is important that New York has this law, even if there are difficulties in enforcing it," he said.

Glenn Every, president of the Bus Association of New York, a trade group, agreed that attrition would force renewal of the state bus fleet with belt-equipped vehicles "in the not-too-distant future," but with a caveat: Traditionally, "buses were built to go a million miles," he said. According to DOT data, 372 pre-2016 buses statewide, including 32 on Long Island, had lifetime mileage under 500,000. Those buses could take more than 12 years to age out, assuming an average 40,000 yearly mileage.

In an email, a federal Department of Transportation spokesperson wrote that one plausible remedy, requiring that pre-2016 buses without seat belts be retrofitted with them, was unfeasible from an engineering standpoint.

"At minimum, to accommodate the additional seat belt loading, significant strengthening of the bus structure would be needed, and in some buses, retrofitting may not be structurally possible at all," the spokesperson wrote.

In 2013, federal regulators estimated the cost of retrofitting a bus with lap/shoulder belts at $40,000. Some small bus operators told regulators at the time that a retrofit requirement would put them out of business.

Pretrip safety briefings

In their report on the Farmingdale bus crash, NTSB investigators called New York's bus seat belt law "a positive step toward enhancing occupant protection in these vehicles" but said that "to fully benefit from this law, awareness and public education, including pretrip safety briefings, are essential."

A bill now awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul's signature, sponsored by Magnarelli and Cooney, would require pretrip safety briefings for charter bus passengers on the "mandatory use" of seat belts and the fines for violations. 

In a subsequent interview, Magnarelli said the reality of bus travel made it harder to achieve compliance than on aircraft. "It's not like we've got attendants going up and down the aisle, [the driver] has got to drive." 

But, he said, citing the dramatic change in norms for seat belt use in cars: "We can change behavior by educating people."

David Kidd, vice president for vehicle research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said that while seat belt law enforcement remained the most effective way to improve belt usage, briefings could nudge passengers toward seat belt use. "It has a different weight if you’re saying, ‘We think it’s important to wear a belt,’ but if you’re saying, ‘The state requires it,’ you can leverage that," Kidd said.

A spokesperson for Hochul, Sean Butler, said in an email that the governor would review the legislation: "Following the tragic crash involving students from Farmingdale High School, she signed legislation to require seat belt usage on Charter Buses and increased penalties for passing and overtaking buses on the roads. She will seriously consider any further opportunities that exist to improve safety on these vehicles even more."

Butler also cited a 2024 law Hochul signed increasing the penalties for overtaking and passing school buses and a 2026 change by the state Department of Motor Vehicles that increased the points assessed for passing a stopped bus from 5 to 8. A driver who gets 11 points in 24 months risks license suspension.