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Goal: To increase the use of
safe bus companies for transporting schoolchildren to and from sporting events,
field trips, and other extracurricular activities.
Background: In June 2002, drug
use, fatigue and inattention contributed to a bus crash that killed the driver
and four teenagers and injured dozens of people traveling to a church camp
about 30 miles east of Dallas. The bus company, it was later found, was in
violation of several Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
While there are extensive efforts
to assure that safe bus companies are hired for home-to-school transportation,
too often bus companies that transport schoolchildren to and from
extracurricular activities are selected solely on the cost of transportation.
We believe that people who arrange for extracurricular transportation would be
more concerned with safety if they knew which companies are safe and which are
unsafe. The purpose of this outreach initiative is to develop, and make
publicly available in each State, a means of evaluating the safeness of each
bus company.
Objective: To develop a coalition
or core group of Federal, State and industry partners in every State to focus
attention on the safe transportation of schoolchildren. The strategy is to
obtain the support of State Departments of Education, and to develop a
simplified means of providing the best safety information on each bus company
operating in that State. Optimally, States will establish criteria for
selecting safe bus companies and publish a list of approved carriers from which
to choose.
At a minimum, the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration will provide safety data on its Web site
(safer.fmcsa.dot.gov) regarding interstate bus companies. To develop safety
information about bus companies not included on the Federal site, partnership
coalitions will work to develop the most reliable sources of information in
each State, and will communicate these findings as efficiently as possible.
The bottom line is that, even if
only a limited number of carriers are identified in a given State, bus
companies identified, as having poor safety records should not be used to
transport our schoolchildren. Implementing this safety initiative down to the
local decision-maker can take many different routes. For example, the State of
North Carolina maintains a database that identifies approved bus companies
available for use throughout the State. This centralized approach may not be
practical for every State.
However, comparable centralized
evaluation processes could be promoted at the county level, the school district
level, or by individual schools.
Given our elevated concern for
safety and security in the aftermath of September 11, this is a small but
important step in looking out for the safety of our children.
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