Every day, in communities all over the United States, school children ride buses to attend extra-curricular activities. The commercial motor vehicles (CMV), whether they are yellow school buses or motor coaches, are the safest passenger vehicles operating on the highway. Too often, however, we hear of catastrophic crashes involving students riding on these types of buses, and we subsequently learn that the cause of the crash was driver, not vehicle, related.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has been charged to significantly reduce the number of fatalities resulting from all types of CMV crashes, regardless of whether they are "interstate" in nature. In order to achieve this goal, the FMCSA must employ safety strategies that exceed its traditional scope of enforcement programs to improve the safety of transportation performed by motor carriers and individuals that it does not regulate. "Moving Kids Safely - by Bus" is one of these strategies.

Objective : Improve the way that bus companies are selected for transporting students to extra-curricular activities, by working with the States to develop and implement a method to eliminate unsafe bus companies from consideration. This initiative will result in the use of safer bus companies (operating yellow buses or motor coaches) to transport school kids, and an increased awareness of safety by those competing for the student transportation market.

Strategy : The FMCSA will facilitate a meeting in each State involving representatives of the education, pupil transportation, motor coach transportation, and highway safety organizations throughout the State. The objective is to identify the problem, to develop a simple process of identifying unsafe motor carriers, and to agree to implement the process uniformly throughout the State. The outcome being sought is that pupil transportation managers in every State will consider safety when creating lists of bus companies that are used by local school trip planners to transport students on field trips and extra-curricular activities.

The FMCSA has worked with a cross-section of partners at the National level in developing the strategy and materials to help implement this field initiative. These partners have committed to work with us locally, to facilitate the meetings and to implement this safety program initiative.