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the Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law in California. New Jersey’s law has yet to be implemented and California’s is supposed to go into effect next summer. Yet both have been bogged down in a political morass. Abigail Kuberiet was a 2-year-old who wandered in front of a stopped school bus and was killed in 2003 because she was too small for the driver to see her. Te legislation requires new buses be equipped with sensors in the front and rear to detect objects, sounding an alarm. It was originally introduced a year after Abigail was killed. It should have gone into effect 180 days after it was signed in January 2016. School districts and bus manufacturers are still waiting for standards to be determined by the New Jersey Department of Education so they know what to manufacture and what to buy. One of the issues delaying the completion is determining whether a sensor system involves only radar or should monitors be included in the equation to give drivers a visual representation of an object. Dave McDonald serves on the School Bus Manufacturers Technical Council task force impaneled by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation to advise the state on the impact of Abigail’s Law. “One of the largest concerns we, as the task force and SBMTC, had was to not create additional distractions for the drivers, such as blind spots,” Mc- Donald said. “Currently there is no purely electronic sensor technology that will detect humans 100 percent of the time, especially small humans.” A similar situation exists in California, where manufacturers and school districts are holding their collective breath while the California Highway Patrol develops regulations to implement SB 1072, “Te Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law,” into the Title 13 school bus standards. Paul Lee was a 19-year-old nonverbal, autistic student attending classes in the Whittier Unified School District. Lee died in September 2015 after he was left alone for about eight hours in a hot school bus. A jury ordered the bus company, Pupil Transportation Cooperative, to pay $23.5 mil- lion to Lee’s family, and it has since filed a lawsuit against the district to recoup some of the funds. Tat legislation requires that all school buses operating in California be equipped with child-check alarm systems that require bus drivers to check every seat for sleeping children. Te regulations are due by Jan. 1. School districts and bus manufacturers will have eight months from that date to comply. Manufacturers and school districts are in limbo waiting to hear what the regulations will be, because no existing technology will be grandfathered. CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader said the law does not provide for exceptions from statutory


regulatory requirements. “Consequently, all child safety alert systems installed on school buses, school pupil activity buses, unless excepted, youth buses and child care motor vehicles will be required to meet the requirements implemented by Senate Bill 1072 and regulatory requirements developed and adopted as a result of Senate Bill 1072,” Clader said. Clader added that CHP has not yet compiled a list of approved systems but has researched existing child safety alert systems and regulations already in place nationwide. “Due to the variety of systems currently available in the aftermarket or installation by original equipment manu- facturers, it is not possible to provide a list of specifications contained in the regulations under development that may differ from any one or more currently available child safety alert system.” Shannon of Twin Rivers, who also serves on CHP’s School Pupil Transportation Advisory Committee, said a set of regulations would standardize equipment and make it easier on every- one. “I think it’s important to have standards so no matter where you go it’s universal,” he said. “If you purchased a fully loaded bus, you would want everything to be the same. If a driver went to a different district you would want them to operate in a familiar environment.” Shannon agreed with Clader’s comments that CHP is examining technology to see what is avail-


able. He said they probably need legal guidance on each recommendation they consider making. “Tey’re probably considering features such as whether they would allow a wireless system, a


hardwire system or one that has motion detection in it,” Shannon speculated. “Currently, systems require you to go to the rear of the bus and press a button when you turn off the (engine), but they don’t require checking each seat. We have seen drivers actually miss kids on the bus even though they have to go to the rear of the bus and press a button.” Karen Daw, transportation director in the Fremont School District in St. Anthony, Idaho, uses a number of different safety technologies on buses from three manufacturers, including child detection systems, GPS, routing systems and video surveillance. She said there should be uniformed standards


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“I think it’s important to have standards so no matter where you go it’s universal. If you purchased a fully loaded bus, you would want everything to be the same. If a driver went to a different district you would want them to operate in a familiar environment.”


— Dave McDonald, Rosco Vision Systems


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