Upon Further Review Keeping the inspection process effective requires a relentless
commitment to putting the safest vehicles on the road WRITTEN BY ERIC WOOLSON
Michigan school transportation professionals say some- thing will be missing when districts face state inspectors’ rigorous annual bus inspections beginning this month. “Some parts were a little subjective. Tere were some in-
consistencies in not just the content but how the inspections were being administered,” explained Gary Bubar, executive director of the Lansing-based Michigan Association for Pu- pil Transportation (MAPT). “We’ve addressed those issues.” Michigan’s action is indicative of the need for everyone
involved in school bus inspections to continually seek out and implement improvements to keep up with changes in equipment, conditions and even external threats. For example, Bubar noted that new personnel in the
Michigan State Police’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division, which is responsible for reviewing the roadwor- thiness and safety of roughly 17,000 school buses, initiated the Wolverine State’s eight-month-long re-evaluation of its school bus inspection guidelines. MAPT was invited to join the review and pulled in
mechanics, transportation supervisors and industry repre- sentatives to assist.
60 School Transportation News October 2013 “Tere’s a reason why school buses are the most highly
regulated vehicles on the road, and that’s because of what we carry every day. We welcome the scrutiny because we want those buses to be the safest vehicles on the road,” Bubar insisted. Te inspection group was divided into smaller teams
that focused on specific mechanical systems, such as brakes, suspension and electronics, and met monthly to enable the teams to offer ideas about specific inspection areas rather than prolonging the time a large group would have taken to evaluate the entire process.
PRACTICAL AND REASONABLE
Noting the entire inspection process was evaluated from “the standpoint of what is practical and reasonable,” Bubar cites the example in which a red tag now means a vehicle can- not be used to transport children until repaired. In the past, a vehicle could not be moved at all after receiving a red tag. “A number of things just needed to be changed,” he
conceded, adding that lawmakers will need to revise some state laws that were written before the regular use of small-
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