Illegal passing of school buses and stop arms has received considerable attention in recent months (and years) in the United States. A NASDPTS snapshot of 28 states, taken on one day last spring, recorded 38,000 total incidents — many involving more than one driver, prompting calls for greater enforcement of illegal passing of stop arms. But is this the answer to improving school bus safety?
When comparisons are made about the safety of different modes of transportation the focus is usually about occupants – whether of planes, trains, cars or buses. We know occupants of buses (whether school or transit buses) are generally considerably safer in terms of miles or hours traveled or per trip, than in cars. In part, this is due to the larger size of the vehicles, the generally lower speeds of buses and more comprehensive driver training.
And, for school journeys (and for other trips), we know children are more vulnerable near the bus than on it. The Kansas State Department of Education’s National School Bus Loading and Unloading Survey provides a useful, long-term picture of fatalities in and around school buses and shows a consistent improvement, but still there were eight deaths in 2010-2011. On average in the Unite States, more than three times as many children are killed around the school bus as in them. Hence, the understandable concern about motorists observing stop arms.
But is illegal passing of stop arms really the problem? Elsewhere in much of the world — from New Zealand and Australia to Europe and the UK — there are no stop arms on school buses. There are good reasons for this. One of the most important aspects of road safety education is consistency, and we teach children to wait on the curb for a vehicle to go past, until the road is clear, and then cross, and never to cross in front of any vehicle, whether a school bus, a transit bus, or a car. This overcomes the problem of there being different sets of rules (for children and drivers) when children are crossing to and from a school bus and when using a transit bus or other vehicles, and with consistency crossing behaviour becomes instinctive.
The other reason is because the bus itself is a substantial visual and auditory obstacle for pedestrians when they are checking to see if a road is clear and an obstacle for other motorists searching for pedestrians around the vehicle.
But is this safer?
Comparing international casualty data is fraught with problems – definitions vary, collection of data is often difficult, and we know that casualties, especially involving children, are often not reported. However, we know that the USA is not a world leader in terms of road user fatalities – other countries especially the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK have considerably lower casualty rates whether in terms of population, car ownership or vehicle mileage.
Sian Thornthwaite is the principal and founder of School Transportation Consultancy (STC) located in Wirksworth, England, the only consultant of its kind in the UK, where a third of all children’s travel is to and from school, equivalent to about 3 billion journeys a year. Local authorities in England alone spend more than £1 billion (U.S. $1,586,600) per year on providing school transport services. Thornthwaite regularly flies across the Atlantic to attend the annual NAPT Summit and the Transporting Students with Disabilities & Preschoolers National Conference.
