EXTRA, EXTRA!
In reviewing a year’s worth of news affecting student transportation, we feature some of the top news that’s fit to print
By Sylvia Arroyo Te STN editorial team was at it once again, looking at the in-
dustry issues from 2011 to 2012 deemed to have the greatest immediate and future impact on student transporters. From a list containing more than two dozen items, we narrowed it down to the 10 most vital news stories of the past school year. Do you agree? Let us know on STNSOCiAL at
www.stnonline.com/go/896.
1 NTSB’s Final Report on Fatal 2010
Missouri Crash Te National Transportation Safety Board in February released
details in its final report on the fatal Aug. 5, 2010, Gray Summit, Mo., chain-reaction crash involving two school buses, a pickup truck and a tractor-trailer (
www.stnonline.com/go/886). NTSB first reported preliminary results from the investigation
in December 2011, when it called on all states and the District of Columbia to enact legislation banning drivers from using all por- table electronic devices. Te crash resulted in the death of two young people — a 16-year-old high school student aboard one of the buses and a 19-year-old male who was driving the pickup truck. He had been texting and driving minutes before the chain- reaction crash he initiated and died instantly. NTSB also found an unsafe following distance by the school bus drivers that contrib- uted to the crash. Many NTSB recommendations came from these findings, including revising and auditing Missouri’s vehicle inspection
52 School Transportation News Magazine July 2012
2 3
program, revising school bus evacuation regulations in the motor vehicle inspection regulations and modifying the school bus in- spections procedures to identify all brake defects during biannual inspections.
FCC Narrowband Initiative for Two-
Way Radios Around the Corner Two decades ago, the Federal Communications Commission
first announced it would change two-way radio frequencies. In 1992 it initiated the motion to increase capacity and efficiency for two-way users while simultaneously opening up more band- width spectrum for the ever-growing wireless technologies. Te FCC will do this by splitting the 25 kHz channel for two-way radio use into two 12.5 kHz channels. With a looming deadline of January 2013, this year is a wake-up
call for school districts that have yet to convert their two-way ra- dio communications to 12.5 kHz (
www.stnonline.com/go/887). Users who do not convert by the deadline will compromise their two-way communications and face possible penalties such as fines.
New Wheelchair Standards Focus on Occupant Restraint, Test Methods
New voluntary wheelchair standards 18, 19 and 20 were pub-
lished in January that improve on and extend the original WC19, first adopted in 2002 to design, test and label wheelchairs used
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