Pretty hard to mandate seatbelts onto school services. Not all vans with front-facing benches (Hiace, Urvan, etc) have seatbelts for each passenger. Worse, no vans with side-facing benches (L300 FB, KC2700) have seatbelts for the bench passengers.

And then, there's the problem of poor school service operators who can't afford to retrofit seatbelts onto their vehicles. For private school operators, this is fine - they can jack up their rates to compensate for the safety measures to be applied. But public school operators don't have the option of increasing their prices, lest they wish to be turned down by cash-strapped parents. Then there's the problem of kids commuting to school through odd means such as 10-in-1-tricycle rides, or 5-in-1-motorcycle rides with their neighbor. Even less safe, and this is a whole set of problems on its own.

Of course, such measures must be mandated...eventually. It's just that I find it to be too extreme to impose right now, even if it's the right way to go. I guess it's more feasible to increase strictness in enforcing the seatbelt law among private vehicles, with amendments to include rear passengers. As much as I want the law to be enforced on all vehicles, private cars lang naman talaga ang may complete set of seatbelts (not all pa nga eh).