Putting their child on the school bus can be an anxious experience for many parents, particularly at the start of the new academic year.
It's easy to worry about their welfare when you hand over such "precious cargo" to the driver of the bus. Horse Riding Jacket Women
But, according to Jonathan Bentley, managing director of the non-profit Pupil Transportation Safety Institute, such fears can be avoided if parents understand the measures taken to avoid accidents by school transportation departments and their staff.
"There is a lot of action behind the scenes." Bentley told Insider, adding, "School districts employ strict rules and regulations because nothing could be more important than the safety of children."
He said that parents who know the protocols should be reassured and feel more confident about the daily journey to and from school.
Still, he said, they can help prioritize their kids' safety by following his list of suggestions.
School bus drivers must first obtain federal qualifications including an entry level driving training and road and driving range certification. But they can only get behind the wheel of a school bus after getting their commercial driver's license. "It varies between states but there's pre-service and other regulatory milestones to hit before they're able to drive kids," Bentley said.
"A lot of parents don't realize this, but school transportation departments spend much of the summer conducting child safety zone studies and selecting bus routes that are the safest and most efficient," Bentley added.
He said the vetted drivers attend safety courses so they're familiar with protocols like checking that no kid is left on the bus — "they sometimes hide under the seats to skip school!" Bentley noted — and that children are met by the right people at drop-off.
Bentley said that parents should check their kids' clothing before they board the bus in case there are loose items that could get trapped in the door, handrails, or seats. "You have to think about dangling items like drawstrings and scarves," he said.
He also advised parents to tighten the straps on their children's backpacks. "When the doors shut, they're very strongly sealed and can grab onto a backpack. It's dangerous," Bentley said.
Bentley said one of the biggest risks faced by drivers is distraction. "Some of these buses hold 60 or 70 children," he said. "There's a lot going on at one time."
He urged parents to tell their kids to treat the bus like a "mobile classroom" with no eating or drinking and unruly behavior such as standing on the seats, throwing things out of the windows, or fighting.
"It's vital that the children on the bus respect the driver," Bentley went on. "If the driver can hear screaming kids behind them, they're not going to be able to focus on the road as well.
He recommends telling children to use "inside voice" just like they do in their classroom.
Children should exit the bus at their designated stop and cross the street at least 15 feet in front of the vehicle so the driver or monitor can watch out for them. "The number 1 rule is to never walk behind the back of the bus," Bentley said, pointing out that kids would be out of sight of the driver if an accident happened.
"If they trip or stop to pick something up, the driver won't see them do it," he said. Bentley told parents to warn their kids that trying to retrieve something like a dropped cellphone isn't worth losing their life.
"Their instinct might be to reach to the ground to pick it up, but you never want a child going anywhere near the mechanics of the bus," Bentley added. "It's a big machine with a lot of moving parts."
Instead, he said, kids should know to tell the driver or monitor what happened. "Let them handle it in the safest possible way," he went on.
Families often gripe because they have to be at the designated stop five minutes before the bus is due to arrive. But, Bentley said, there's a good reason why.
"Nobody can predict road conditions and traffic, so you have to be flexible and deal with it," he said. "The bus might be early, or it might be late. It's nobody's fault."
He said that, too often, parents take their frustration out on the driver and, in some cases, try to board the bus to rage at them. "It's unfair, unhelpful and unsafe," he added.
Other times, people distract the driver and hold up the bus without meaning to be rude. "They'll raise some issue about their kid directly to the driver whose job is not to solve it," Bentley said. "All it does is build up traffic, annoy the other children on the bus and delay it further."
Horse Riding Jacket Mens Instead, the expert said, parents should call the school or its transportation department and speak to someone in a better position to help.