Software tracks the attention of Travis Wright, a bus driver for Santa Fe Independent School District in Texas.
can really encourage good driving behaviors. We have a saying, ‘Raise the Game to Help to Train.’”
Embracing Technology Mark McKinney heads up the transportation depart-
ment of the Santa Fe Independent School District in suburban Houston, Texas. McKinney is fully on board with using GPS and video technology for coaching his drivers. “We’re doing a pilot program using Samsara on six of our International buses and two Chevy Suburbans that other district personnel can use,” said McKinney. “There is one camera that faces the road which can read stop signs, speed limit signs and other information. The camera that faces the driver tracks eye movements and can tell if that driver is using a cell phone, or looking at paperwork, and not focusing on the road like they should be.” So far, McKinney said he is trying not to intervene
too much since Samsara has only been installed on the buses for a couple of months. If a driver happens to come into the office for some reason, he said they may also get a casual, “as long as you’re here” bit of coaching. Samsara uses facial recognition and assigns a safety score to individual drivers based on recorded incidents. “We can decide on a number, like a score of 90, where we give the driver their own clips to review. If their score
54 School Transportation News • FEBRUARY 2024
drops below that, we can have a coaching session and review the clips,” said McKinney. Samsara is very accurate at picking up incidents, but
McKinney said there are some surprises that validate proper procedures. “One of my best drivers apparently didn’t stop at a stop sign,” McKinney recalled. “As it turned out, it was an intersection where another road came in at an angle, in which the camera picked up that stop sign on the other part of the intersection. My driver was doing his job correctly, that sign wasn’t his to stop at.” McKinney said he is replacing his older buses with IC Bus models that also take advantage of available tech- nology. “The new members of the fleet are equipped with Wingman Fusion accident mitigation and adap- tive cruise technology. The buses also have 360-degree surround view cameras and 11 other cameras inside and out. Fifteen out of the 30 route buses also have stop-arm enforcement cameras. Stop-arm citation revenue was used to equip all the Sante Fe buses with child reminder systems. The last 19 buses we ordered have Fogmaker fire suppression systems,” McKinney added. With so much technology available, districts could
build an environment where drivers can accept that everyone makes mistakes, but with proper coaching, they’re encouraged to continually grow and develop. ●
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