Tragically, no matter how much school bus safety training is provided to them or how much it’s pounded into the heads of school bus drivers to check their mirrors constantly before leaving bus stops, it seems there will be incidents like what happened on Tuesday.
An Atlanta Public Schools bus ran over 5-year-old Everette Johnson, a kindergartner at Usher Elementary School in the north part of town, after several children unloaded at the afternoon stop. According to news reports, Johnson turned around and headed back to the bus after unloading and apparently dropped his backpack beneath the bus. The driver didn’t see him and began to pull away from the curb as Johnson reached beneath the bus for his backpack.
Per School Transportation News research, Everette’s death was the third since August, the second of the regular 2009-2010 school year and the 16th of the 2009 calendar year. The Kansas Department of Education surveys all 50 states each year to determine the number of student fatalities that occur in the so-called school bus danger zone, the approximate 10- to 12-foot area around the vehicle where the majority of student deaths occur as opposed to inside the bus.
From the 1970-1971 through the 2007-2008 school years, the KDOE’s pupil transportation unit data shows that 718 students have been killed by the school bus during the loading or unloading process.
Results for 2008-2009 are expected late this year or in early 2010.
