Many individuals can, theoretically, select school bus stops: School district management, contractors, software applications personnel, drivers, students and parents. Who actually does this is almost always an issue in crossing-related lawsuits, whether the student was struck by the school bus itself or a third-party vehicle. When the student-victim selected the stop, the defendants are almost always asked some form of this question: “So, in your system, children who don’t even have the ability to cross a street get to select the bus stops?” There is really no good response to this question. If you make choosing the bus stop multiple
Archives for School Transportation News
Who We Are and What We Do
Crashing a school bus, head-on, into a transit bus or motorcoach costing five times as much is not a fair test. But it is also a stupid one. As even officials in other bus sectors admit, each mode is uniquely superior in providing certain types of trips. School buses are superior in providing home-to-school transportation because they transport mostly individuals who do not yet have the skills to cross streets and intersections, and help them do so. School buses are not just buses. They are crossing buses. This is not a minor distinction. Crossing is what we do. As a
Crossing: Things to Come
The November, 2006 issue of STN will launch a series of articles about the most essential and unique feature of our community and our service: The operation of crossing buses. These articles will certainly acknowledge that a vehicle carrying its own traffic signal is something very unusual and very special. But coming installments will also explore approaches, practices and procedures for designing and operating crossing bus systems at a level-of-detail rarely presented. We will explore these systems not only in terms of safety, but also in terms of liability. We will also explore these systems in terms of their efficiency,
Knowing Your Passengers
Each school year starts with new or newly-tweaked routes, new students and new drivers. So too does every run assigned to a substitute. Or every after-school run attended by different students on different days. When drivers have too little information, bad things can happen: With no information about the number of students boarding (much less which ones needed to cross), a substitute driver picked up several students, waited for one whom fellow students advised her was on the route, and eventually pulled away – with the door still open and the red lights flashing. A kindergartner and his parent, arriving