24 School Transportation News Magazine September 2011
Survey Sheds Light on How Student Transporters Provide Training to School Bus Drivers
A survey conducted by School
Transportation News of read- ers in May and June indicates what most people in this industry already know: wide discrepan- cies exist state to state based on uniformity of driver training, especially when it comes to the number of training hours. Making matters even more
confusing, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration holds school bus drivers em- ployed by private companies to different standards than publicly employed drivers. For example, contractor-drivers must undergo entry-level training in four topic areas prior to receiving their CDL. Tese drivers must also have their
driving records reviewed by their employer each year. Tis is on top of state-mandated training. Of more than 11,000 readers
polled this spring, 625 total re- sponses were submitted, with 510 of those completing all 20 ques- tions pertaining to how driver training is administered at their school district or bus company.
Just shy of 70 percent of the respondents indicated they held the formal position of transportation director or supervisor. Meanwhile, 16 percent classified their job title as “other.” Tose answers spanned the spectrum of secretary, technician, business manager, transportation liaison, shop foreman and all of the above. Nearly 56 percent of the respondents
Congratulations to STA drivers Lucy Van Dunk, Chris Brosyowski,
Huy Phan, Les Johnson, Sandy Rowe, and Katie-Mae Ellingwood for competing in the School Bus Driver International Safety Competition!
said there was only one driver trainer for driver groups of one to 25 (34 percent) or one to 50 (22 percent), and 33 percent said the ratio is more like one trainer for every five or 10 drivers. Te remaining 11 percent said that ratio is closer to 1 to 100. Tat presents a lot of new drivers for a safety trainer to attempt to juggle, according to student transportation consultant Dick Fischer. “Tat’s kind of shocking,” said Fisher,
owner of Trans-Consult and a retired district director of transportation from Southern California who started the first School Bus Safety Week in the early 1970s. “One trainer for 100 drivers is way too many drivers to train.” But the most interesting results, he
added, were the responses to a question on classroom training for a driver with an existing CDL and one without. “Since they do not know who trained
the person with a CDL, one would think [the driver trainer] would spend a lot more time teaching them their proce- dures and ways,” he said. “To give a new person only five hours of training went out years ago, you would think. You’re going to train someone in bus inspec- tion, mirror use, reference-point driving, defensive driving, loading and unloading, railroad crossings, collision procedures, learning the bus, using each exits, physi- cal training, just to name a few. Tat would take more than five hours of class- room time.”
How many new drivers are trained each school year?
e each day!
11 to 15 7.4%
16 to 25 6.2%
More than 25 12.6%
6 to 10 13%
1 to 5 60.8%
Based on 625 survey responses
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