www.stnonline.com 25 He added that a proper training should


actually take at least 20 to 25 hours. Jeff Cassell, president of School Bus


Safety Company and a former director of safety at Laidlaw Educational Ser- vices, called the low number of training hours “ridiculous.” “I was very surprised that the major-


ity of trainees get less than 15 hours, and most fell into the one-to-five hours cat- egory,” he added. “When you consider how large and heavy a school bus is, and the fact that transit bus drivers receive at least 70 hours of behind-the-wheel train- ing, you see how inadequate this is.” Commercial truck drivers, on the other


hand, receive at least 150 hours training behind the wheel. Cassell also said he was surprised that


around 75 percent of behind-the-wheel training is performed one on one. “We found that


the most produc-


tive training is if there are two or three trainees per trainer,” he said. “While one trainee is driving, you direct the other one or two to watch and critique the trainee, as the trainer does the same. Te one or two watching then have to focus and learn from the mistakes of the trainee who is driving. Te trainer can re- inforce what they spot and what they do not. Tis is a powerful way to learn. Tey then change places.” Te survey responses also indicated


that the average cost to train a new driver is around $2,000. Cassell said that, while with Laidlaw, he calculated that driver training cost around $3,000 per person, which could be due to the fact that Laidlaw was able to provide “far more training than is provided by most of the participants of the survey.” About 60 percent indicated their op-


erations employed 50 or fewer bus drivers, with nearly two-thirds of those reporting that the driver pool was between one and 25. Very large fleets of more than 150 driv- ers came in third place with 16 percent of the vote. Nearly 61 percent said their op- erations train between one and five new


For behind the wheel training, how many trainees are with each trainer at one time?


One trainer w/ 3 trainees 7.7%


One trainer w/ four trainees 1.2%


One trainer w/ five trainees 3.5%


school bus drivers each school year. Tirteen percent said between six and 10 new drivers are trained each year, and two fewer pollsters said the same thing about training more than 25 news drivers. Two hundred forty-four, or 39


percent, of the responses indi- cated they had less than 25 buses in the fleet. Fleet sizes of 26 to 50 buses came in second at about 18.5 percent, followed closely by the nearly 16 percent who said they operated more than 150 buses. Fleets of 51 to 75 buses, 76


to 100 and 100 to 150 each came in at 9 percent. Also telling was that nearly nine


of 10 respondents said the trainer completes the training record af- ter each day of training, compared to only 2 percent who said the driver trainee fills out the paper work. Te remaining responses ran the gamut of “no records are kept at all” to the transportation “supervisor reviews the logs and signs them. “ “When the trainers make out the training report, that’s the fast-


est way to be accused of falsifying a record,” said Fischer. “It’s hard to prove [the trainee] got the infor- mation. Te trainee should make out report in their own handwrit- ing to prove that the trainer did not falsify the records, and the driver candidate can’t claim they did not receive the necessary training material. Tat eliminates any spitting contests.” ■


Look for results from a follow- up survey in a future edition of School Transportation News.


One trainer w/ 2 trainees 15%


One trainer w/ one trainee 72.6%


Based on 574 survey responses


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