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“If someone decides not to follow the rules, I don’t know how you train for that.”
Johnson, district transportation safety and compliance officer, said Clark County is down 100 routes on any given day due to driver outages, but it remains in compliance with and even exceeds the FMCSA clearinghouse standards. “We already do the random drug testing with a third-party medical review officer, and we do the random testing,” Johnson said. “If the bus driver tests positive post-accident, pre-employment or at random, our policy is they are dismissed. I think our standards are slightly ahead of the game.” Te X-factor in all this is the unexplained behavior of the bus driver.
Increasingly, the industry will turn to video technology as a gauge for current driver safety as well as a potential predictor down the road. Tennessee’s state director Robinson lamented that even when
current checks, balances and training for drivers is correctly in place, it is still difficult to foretell the future behavior of bus drivers. Some act with no apparent explanation, even with laws in place that hold school bus drivers and their employers accountable to a higher standard. Tis could prove to be a boon to video surveillance companies, especially thos that monitor driver behavior behind the wheel. Te major players in the school bus video market have this capability in addition to monitoring the students, but many are ramping up
their offerings to hone in specifically on performance behind the wheel as well as on surrounding traffic for both disciplinary and training purposes. For example, Durham CEO David A. Duke announced the con- tractor is equipping all Hamilton County Schools buses with Drive- Cam systems by the time school resumes this month, and Durham will add the technology to its entire national fleet of 16,000 buses over the next two years. It is one of several new safety upgrades being im- plemented, including a nationwide complaint management system to report concerns with specific drivers and routes, which is already in place in Chattanooga, and the creation of a new safety and data compliance office to continuously review driver and vehicle data. “Looking at incidents across the nation, incidents of children
that are hurt and sometimes killed in crashes that could have been prevented with proper training, things still happen,” Robinson said. Martin Slife, principal consultant for pupil transportation in
Illinois, where Durham is based, agreed. “You can train and train until you make the training second na-
ture, but if someone decides not to follow the rules, I don’t know how you train for that,” he said. ●
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34 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2017
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS
Jan17_STN.indb 34
12/20/16 4:50 PM
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