SPECIAL REPORT
Higher Speeds and More Traffic
Make Jack a Tense Boy… Do different driving environments have an affect on how drivers react during an accident? By Stephane Babcock
Would you travel down the road at 30 miles per
hour with your eyes closed? Te correct answer, al- though obvious, still escapes many drivers on the road today. By simply taking your eyes off the road for only three seconds to check a mirror or investi- gate the source of shouting at the back of the bus, you travel approximately 135 feet effectively blind. It is something that can lead to crashes, sometimes ones that end in a fatality, as in the recent school bus tragedy in Missouri this past August. Preliminary reports on the crash, which involved
a school bus driving into the back of another school bus that had crashed into an SUV that had just run into the rear of the semi-truck cab, have cited driver inattention on the fault of the first bus driver and following too closely by the second
38 School Transportation News Magazine October 2010
Oct10_STN.indb 38 9/14/10 12:17 PM
school bus driver as contributing factors in the accident. According to one industry expert, the mistakes made by the driver are common during activity trips, a type of driving that greatly differs from driving home-to-school routes. “In some states, school buses can run 70 or 75
miles an hour on the highway, and these drivers are running the speed limit when they’re paid by the hour,” said Trans-Consult’s Dick Fischer. “If you say you train drivers to go the maximum speed limit, people look at you like you’re crazy. But it happens.” And training is where many of the problems can
be curtailed, according to Fischer. When he was a transportation director at Orange Unified School District in Southern California, he would not al- low anyone to drive an activity trip without at least
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88