ANALYSIS In Major League Baseball, statistics are included in every conversation. Fans, team Game
representatives, individual ballplayers and the media use statistics to prepare for oppos- ing teams, analyze the performance of individuals and compare ballplayers from one generation to another. Ask any fan, casual or serious, about their favorite team and you are likely to hear about win/loss records, number of games behind the division leader or the number of games ahead of the others. Ask about any ballplayer and you likely will hear about batting average, Earned Run Average, Runs Batted In or statistics from numerous other categories. Whether it is fans, team management or the media, there are disagreements over
Preparation Understanding, Using the FARS Database of School Bus Fatalities and Injuries By Doug Snyder
which statistic is the most relevant or important. Tese conversations are often filled with acronyms and numbers that can be confusing to an outsider unfamiliar with the game. Fifty years ago, there was only a handful of statistics that were tracked in Major League Baseball. Today, there are myriad statistics that track virtually every aspect of the game, and new categories are popping up as paradigms shift and teams try to gain an edge over opponents. Tinking outside of the “yellow box” and attempting to gain an edge over the com-
petition, Dr. Cal LeMon created the “School Bus Safety Report Card,” first published in 1998. In it, LeMon cited, among other statistics, school-aged children injured or killed in fatality-related passenger vehicle accidents during school transportation hours for each state in the nation. Tis data was compiled from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which is maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administra- tion (NHTSA) and is the only national database of motor vehicle crashes that occur in the United States. In the “Report Card,” as you would expect, the number of children that were killed
or injured in fatality-related passenger vehicle accidents compared to those in school buses was overwhelming. But even more important, in my mind, was that these num- bers were quantifiable and the data was extracted from a national database operated by the preeminent motor vehicle safety organization in the United States. LeMon’s com- parison made a lot of sense for the simple reason that if we in the school transporta- tion community were to identify our main competition, it would undeniably be parents driving their children and high school students driving themselves to and from school. We work in an industry where our goal each and every year is a perfect safety re-
cord. Tis often unattainable goal causes us to critique and better ourselves, which we should. But we should also compare our outstanding safety record to other modes of transportation to and from school — our competition. Comparing our safety record to that of our competitors was my primary goal in creating the FARS searchable database for the California Association of School Transportation Officials (CASTO) in 1999. I was originally only going to use California data and break it out by county for the CASTO membership. But after reviewing the data fields, it was just as easy to make a national database and make it a useful tool for the entire industry. I worked closely with many leaders in the school transportation community, includ-
ing the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NAS- DPTS), to define the purpose of and develop the parameters for the database. It was de- termined that we would compare children going to and from school in passenger motor vehicles, as pedestrians, and in school buses. Te database would include children five to 18 years old; school transportation hours would be 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday; and the school year would be Sept. 1 through June 15, excluding major national holidays. Te major national holidays are: Labor Day; Veterans Day; the two days for Tanksgiving; the two-week holiday around Christmas and New Year’s Day; and Memorial Day. Before you say, “Tese ages, hours, days or holidays are not consistent with what we practice in my area,” keep in mind that this is a national database, and determining parameters for this type of project means finding a common denominator that is consistent on average in the United States. It is true that we have no way of knowing if passenger vehicles or pedestrians depicted in the database are actually traveling to or from school. However, as you will see when
26 School Transportation News Magazine January 2010
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