training fall by the wayside. “Now they got the big screen in front of them and
every time someone burps it records it, and they have to look at it instead of paying attention to what they’re doing on the road,” quipped school bus training expert Richard Fischer, who has owned Trans-Consult since 1977, after serving as a transportation and safety direc- tor in California. Having been called as an expert witness too many times to count, Fischer said three questions often come up in court that can be addressed with training, study- ing driver manuals and simple record keeping: Did the driver have a duty? Did the driver previously breach this duty? What was done to correct the breach of duty? State CDL driver manuals and the National School
Transportation Specifications and Procedures manual updated by the National Congress on School Transpor- tation don’t just lay out best practices, Fischer said. It is a driver’s job to know the manuals forward and backward. “A driver-carrier has one duty to perform, and that’s
to do everything possible to make sure that the drivers are safe to drive the bus and the kids are protected,” Fischer said. In addition to training, he advised documenting hours and topics covered, with each driver docu- menting their own record in their own handwriting. A trainer writing records might implicate questions of falsified records. Most importantly though, Fischer said don’t make excuses. “Quit arguing the point we don’t have any money to
do safety meetings or we’re short drivers, so we have to excel our training program,” Fischer said. “Every- one says we transport the most precious cargo in the world—then do it.” Besides providing benefits on the road, many insur-
ers favor having vehicles equipped with telematics and cameras for their benefits in court, particularly as an upward trend of high judgments increases financial risk. Along with an increase in court-ordered “nuclear
verdicts” that brokers say have resulted in increased in- surance costs across the board, recent years have seen a trend of higher judgments in urban areas and lower judg- ments in rural areas impacting localized policy prices. Regardless of who is at fault, Lisa Paul of Paul Con-
sulting said juries are often poised to believe the little guy over a large company, a trend she has seen play out time and time again over a 32-year career in com- mercial insurance. “Courts tend to rule against the big power unit,
where people perceive there’s big dollars, whether that’s a school district or a large public company,” Paul said. “But the utilization of external facing cameras has
Air Conditioning for School Buses (Type A, C, & D)
MFSAB & Activity Buses
Specify Trans/Air A/C systems installed in your buses on your next purchase.
A/C system installations available on buses ordered without A/C in your fleet
Purchase A/C parts on-line for easy ordering
busacparts.com
Parts and components available for any bus, any year.
(800) 673-2446
www.transairmfg.com |
www.busacparts.com
www.stnonline.com 25
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