How Safe are School Buses?

We all know that our print and broadcast media have a real talent for stitching together unconnected events, and then discerning a “disturbing new trend” in those events. Remember the hoopla a few summers ago about shark attacks? Beset by the kind of “slow news” month that cropped up from time to time, some reporters and newsreaders suggested that there had been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks by sharks on unsuspecting swimmers along the world’s coastlines. After the hysteria had died down a bit, cooler heads began to prevail – and they discovered that there had in fact been no statistically meaningful increase in the frequency of shark attacks.

Such a revelation would, of course, provide absolutely no comfort to any poor soul unlucky enough to have suffered a shark attack. That grim reality underscores a rather obvious fact about news coverage of any tragedy that seems preventable – and that fact is that even one victim is unquestionably one too many. And so it is with school bus accidents. As summer vacations draw to their close, and our kids start heading back to school, we can, quite understandably, become more aware of – and, it may be, more worried about – those stocky yellow behemoths, whose presence in our neighborhoods we so often take for granted. It was not that long ago – May 2005 – that our own area experienced a horrible reminder of our children’s vulnerability, when a school bus in Liberty, Missouri, with 53 kids aboard, struck two vehicles in an intersection. Two adults died in the vehicles and nearly half the children went to the hospital, several with serious injuries. That tragedy brought to mind the “disturbing trend” technique of news reporting mentioned earlier – the USA Today on-line article about the Liberty accident included a grisly photograph of an accident in Arlington, Virginia, three weeks earlier: a head-on collision between a school bus and a sanitation truck, in which two children were killed.

When we consider whether or not the media are justified when they connect events that are separated by twenty-one days and over a thousand miles, we must concede that that issue is secondary in comparison to the more pressing and valid question: how safe are those buses?

As always, statistics tell only part of the story. The National Safety Council says that over 22 million children ride the bus each school day – and nearly 600,000 school buses are in service nationwide. Those numbers might seem to indicate a great and troubling vulnerability: after all, that is a lot of kids, and a lot of buses to be driven, inspected, maintained and monitored. Is our system up to the task?

Some individuals and organizations, like the National Coalition of School Bus Safety, worry that our children are not safe enough on buses, and are campaigning vigorously for an added protective measure – lap belts for all seats on all school buses. Organization president Alan L. Ross says that “seatbelts would cost most [school] districts about $1.50 a child per year or less than a penny a day for this added protection. Even districts with proper driver screening and the best safety records, cannot predict the performance of the ‘other driver.’ ”

Ross’s point is well taken and the seatbelt campaign has been making headway in recent years. At least three states – New York, New Jersey, and Florida – have passed laws mandating that new school buses have seat belts, and similar legislation is making its way through several other legislatures. On its surface, the seatbelt proposal would appear to be a no-brainer. But at least one group, the National Association for Pupil Transportation, argues that the “penny a day” claim Ross makes actually translates into an additional cost of about $4000 to outfit a new 66-passenger school bus (whose cost can run from $80,000 to $95,000) with lap belts for the children. The implication, though unstated, is clear enough: school districts – that is, taxpayers – would have to bear the burden of paying for these improvements.

Yet although the NAPT’s argument has its merits, it runs afoul of an inherent weakness, and that is the notion that any of us might be comfortable placing our children’s safety into some kind of a cost/benefit analysis. Of course we would, if asked, say that we would be happy to pay a few more tax dollars in order to provide that additional safety measure for our kids. But the point I want to make here is that safety belts only begin to address the problem – and a larger, more complex problem it is. The NAPT, for instance, might be on much safer ground when it calls for a standardized, nationwide set of inspection criteria for all school buses. Right now, inspection programs vary considerably from state to state.

Importantly, though, both those in favor of mandatory seatbelt installation and those opposed to it are in agreement as to one pivotal fact: America’s school buses are already the most regulated and inspected motor vehicles on the road, and they have some of the best trained drivers. So it seems to me that while the seatbelt debate should by all means continue, it ought to unfold within a broader context: the overall question of how the rest of America’s 48 million schoolchildren get to school each day.

It may be that with respect to this issue, the numbers are a bit more revealing than those pennies-or-thousands calculations about seatbelt installation costs. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science and Engineering has looked at the last several years’ worth of data concerning deaths and injuries involving children going to and from school, and its findings are arresting. Nationwide, an average of twenty children are killed each year in accidents involving school buses. That average breaks out to about five deaths while riding a bus and around fifteen “on the ground” – that is, either run over by a bus or suffering some other fatality while getting on or off a bus. Nobody will argue that that is twenty too many – as is the equally scary number of injuries (6000) each year from school bus accidents.

But that research foundation has uncovered even more troubling numbers. Across the country, an average of 448 people are killed each year, and over 78,000 injured, in accidents going to or from school when a teen is driving. And adults who drive their kids to school, rather than relying upon the bus, may not be entirely comforted to know that those vehicles, with adult drivers, will have accidents whose annual costs are some 169 individuals killed and 51,000 injured. Even children who walk to school are over six times more likely to be killed in a vehicle accident than those who ride the bus.

While these statistics might suddenly make home-schooling look very desirable, I offer them here not to frighten, but to help put the issue of school bus safety into perspective. Writer and consultant Cal LeMon, a strong advocate of school bus use, points out that “Whether or not there are lap belts in school buses often is the lightning rod issue in some communities. The energy and activism should be directed toward getting more children to ride school buses – that’s where the big safety payoff is.” Referring to the inspection and training programs already in place, LeMon argues that parents have to do their part and insist that their kids use this admittedly less cool way to get to school.

He has a point. If the alternative to the bus is to allow a teen to drive himself – and, it may be, friends and young siblings – to school, then we must remember that teens are inherently less experienced drivers, and that most vehicular accidents take place close to home, and many in parking lots. Teens (and adults, for that matter) driving to school will almost inevitably encounter both of these situations. Parents should consider these factors, even as they make every effort to learn how their school districts inspect their buses and train and monitor their drivers.

Ultimately, what’s at stake here is education – an entirely logical place to end an article that deals with an important aspect of school life. Each parent of an older, driving-age child has an obligation – to that child and to others – to make every effort to help that teen become the safest, most alert and pro-active driver he or she can be. And where the younger children are concerned, it is worth remembering that of the kids who are hurt or killed in school bus accidents, the vast majority of those occurrences take place when the youngsters are getting on or off the bus – not when they are actually on board. The National Safety Council’s web site (www.nsc.org) has useful tips that parents can pass on to their children – rules for getting on and off the bus, and for behavior while on board. That kind of education – as well as conscious decisions about whether or not to allow our teens to drive to school – will, in the long run, be as valuable as anything else in promoting and enhancing school bus safety.

Chris Riley, a former high school teacher, lives in Overland Park with his wife and daughter.