TOP STORY
Industry Considers Causes of Spike in Loading, Unloading Deaths
By Ryan Gray Many school transporters and those aligned to the industry expressed
shock in late February upon learning that 17 students were “officially” killed at their bus stop during the 2008-2009 school year, according to the Kansas State Department of Education’s 39th Annual National School Bus Loading and Unloading Survey, the most fatalities occurring at bus stops reported by states since 20 in the 2004-2005 school year. Many more than 17 students died, of course, around school buses or
school bus stops last year. But five of the deaths recorded for the survey as occurring in direct relation to loading or unloading were due to a student missing the bus and running after it, a continuing trend over the past several years. During the 2005-2006 school year, the survey found that six students were killed at the rear-wheel position of the school bus as they either ran after the bus or dropped books in the so-called 10- to 20-foot danger zone that surrounds the school bus body.
“Tat’s an eye-opener,” said Larry
Bluthardt, director of the School Bus Safety Education Team in Kansas, which conducts the survey. Perhaps it’s simply a reflection of
today’s society? “We’re in a fast-paced, hurry-to-
get-where-you’re-going world,” he added. “This seems to be the trend with kids growing up.” It appears that some school bus
drivers are also in too much of a hur- ry. FMVSS 111 requires school bus drivers to have properly-adjusted rearview and crossover mirrors that are designed to limit blind spots and make children visible at virtu- ally all locations around the vehicle. But Bluthardt admitted that many bus drivers continue to premature- ly pull away from bus stops. “What’s going on with the driver?
Where’s the training that you’re to be looking in your rearview mirror before you pull out?” he asked. “We pound that into our drivers’ heads constantly.
We’re amazed that we get [these responses from states] and read them and think, ‘Good grief!’ Are the bus drivers in a hurry, too? Are they untrained?” Historically, the industry has seen a spike every several years in fatali-
ties, which Bluthardt said is likely tied to complacency in training exercises because so few children die while being transported to or from school onboard the yellow bus. Pointing to the last spike in danger zone deaths during the 2004-2005 school year, Ted Finlayson-Schueler, owner of train-
18 School Transportation News Magazine May 2010
ing consultant company SafetyRules! in Buffalo, N.Y., said the outcry may be a result of nothing more than industry pride in the fact that it provides the safest mode of transportation there is for school children. “Every time that happens, everyone wants to know,
‘Does this mean we are doing something wrong?’ If you do anything with statistics, when you’re dealing with numbers this small, it’s just random fluctuation,” he said. “If you look at all the fatalities in the U.S., if they jump from 40,000 to 80,000, that would be big news. But for a number to jump from 8 to 17, just be- cause it’s also double, doesn’t make it big news. When it happens everyone feels compelled to make a big deal of it, but unless it’s consistent, it’s really just, and you hate to say this when you talk about kids’ lives, but it’s just the luck of the draw.” Jeff Cassell admits the overall fatalities remain min-
iscule in comparison but still thinks better training is in order. Te vice president of operations for School Bus Safety Company, a provider of school bus driver training that includes proper procedures for loading and unloading students, said 13 deaths last school year absolutely could have been prevented if the driver compared the number of children waiting at the stop when the bus pulls up with that of the number who actually board the bus, all before pulling away. On the ride, the driver should count the children as they get off the bus and use the mirrors to watch the same number of kids clear the danger zone. Otherwise, deaths will increase, like he forecast for this
year. As of this writing, STN research had cited 16 school bus related deaths in 2009, three of which occurred at the rear of the bus during loading or unloading. A former safety director for Laidlaw Education Ser-
vices, Cassell conducted a study to show how driver vision can be obscured. Te company hid 27 adults in and around a large school bus that a bus driver was unable to see using the mirrors. Another common procedure was for the company to write up any stu- dent who chased after the bus. “A number of those kids were killed running after
the bus, either by a car because they ran in front of it or by the bus itself under the rear wheels,” he said. “Te message is, if you do run after it, you will never be allowed on the bus. End of story.” ■
Read more at
www.stnonline.com/go/584.
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