Seat Belts, School Buses and Safety: Bus Drivers' Comments

Here are some excerpts from a Fall 1998 discussion of the seat belt issue on the ESP mailing list:

"I will reiterate what I have said repeatedly—We, as drivers, need:

1. More support on discipline problems on the bus. That would be very cost effective. It wouldn't cost a thing for the administrators and parents to insist on good, safe bus behavior.

2. We need another person, a monitor on these buses, so that we can concentrate on driving and not on what is happening inside the bus.

3. More training. It is almost impossible for a regular ed driver, who has no training in special needs to maintain control on a bus full of children (some of whom will be special needs). Do you know what it is like to look into your mirror and see a child having a seizure? Especially when you don't know what to do or that even that this child was seizure prone? And this is happening while you are trying to maneuver a 42 ft vehicle down a street! We need to be considered a full part of the educational team in all areas.

4. Less privatization of our buses. Often these drivers are not as well trained or well screened as well as non-privatized drivers.

5. Federal laws passed and strictly enforced regarding the number of children that can be safely transported on a school bus. At present, there are no such laws, only the manufacturer's suggested amount of students, which is capacity plus 20 per cent. This means that a 72 passenger bus can haul as many as 86 children. The law should be no more than two high or middle students per seat and no more than 3 elementary students per seat.

6. Strict enforcement of the no pass while loading/unloading laws. These people who do so should go to jail. "
- Debbie Moore, Georgia

"In Maple Heights city schools, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, our school buses all have cell phones. We tried for years to get some kind of communication on the bus, never even having 2-way radios. I remember stopping at people's houses and asking them to make calls for me in an emergency situation. We have put mandatory communications systems in our contract...and have had cell phones for all busses for about 5 years. I no longer drive a bus ( library clerk now) but my old bus-driver friends all agree that the cell phones are absolutely fantastic!"
- Julie, Ohio

"I am a bus driver for Gloucester Township (NJ) for 18 years. I do not belive in the seat belt law. I have seen children get hit in the face, head, etc. Also, if you have 42 little Kindergarten kids on a bus and I get hurt or knocked out, there is no way they can get out. If there was ever a fire I would never be able to get them out safely. It takes only 3 minutes for a bus to burn to the ground."
- Bonnie L Chalfant, New Jersey

"I am a local President of a large ESP unit in Michigan. My local is made up of all ESP classifications, including bus drivers, and while I have never driven a bus, I have represented drivers and their concerns for almost twenty years. I must tell you that I have never met any drivers that suppport the notion of seat belts on buses, for all the reasons that have already been expressed by other drivers here on this list.

I have to share this with you — I once spent an afternoon on a bus run, and what an eye opening experience it was! It took me about five minutes to fully understand that I did not have what it takes to be a school bus driver. I could NEVER, EVER keep one eye on the mirror watching kids, making sure that they stayed in their seats and behaved, while at the same time keeping one eye on the road. School bus drivers are perhaps the most undervalued school personnel in our school family, and frankly, I am not really sure why that is the case."
- Karl Bell, Michigan