SEATTLE — With less than three months remaining to ensure compliance with California’s Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law, some school districts are still struggling to upgrade fleets with a child safety alert system that meets state standards. Zonar—the leader in smart fleet management technology—has created a printable checklist to help state schools, businesses, and organizations that provide transportation to students to ensure full compliance before the September 2019 deadline.
In 2016, the Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law was adopted after the tragic death of a student the previous year. Hoon Jun “Paul” Lee, a nonverbal autistic, died after he was unintentionally left behind on a school bus with the windows shut during a heatwave. The driver did not conduct a proper vehicle check and failed to notice Lee before exiting the bus.
The law, which is intended to prevent passengers from being left behind, requires school buses to be equipped with a safety alert system and child-safety training for drivers. The law also enforces numerous penalties for officials who fail to notify the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) of students who have been left unattended on a school bus.
“We believe that anyone who works with children understands the great responsibility they are charged with. Sadly, even the best-intentioned person can make mistakes, which can have tragic consequences,” says H. Kevin Mest, senior vice president of passenger services for Zonar. “We want to help school districts ensure the safety of their students and passengers, which is why we developed an easy-to-use guide for those needing help through the decision-making process.”
Vehicles that are dedicated to transporting special needs students must already be compliant. Due to the complexities that are involved with updating each school bus in a fleet, lawmakers granted an extension for all general passenger school buses to have the necessary technology onboard by September 2019. School officials can find the downloadable guide at LINK. This includes:
- A workbook calendar in checklist form
- Survey and assessment questions for drivers and stakeholders
- An easy equation to forecast installation time per vehicle
- A guide on identifying and choosing the right vendor
Zonar creates technology solutions that collect and analyze data from a wide variety of vehicles, including trucks, school buses and construction equipment. This information provides drivers and fleet managers with the data and analysis that are needed to better navigate any route and safely manage passengers.
Zonar technology is included in nearly 200,000 school buses nationwide, which helps school districts bolster and improve the safety of school bus passengers. This also gives parents peace-of-mind, by ensuring they know where their children are while on the road.
About Zonar
Founded in 2001, Zonar has pioneered smart fleet management solutions throughout vocational, pupil, mass transit and commercial trucking industries. Zonar helps fleets of all sizes maximize the use of their assets with solutions that are dedicated to improving compliance, efficiency, maintenance, ridership visibility, safety and tracking.
Cloud-based services with open API’s drive Zonar’s smart fleet solutions, by making it easy for fleet owners and managers to stay connected to their fleets and drivers and operators to dispatch. Headquartered in Seattle and majority-owned by technology company Continental, Zonar also has a Technology Development Center in downtown Seattle, a regional office in Cincinnati and a distribution center outside of Atlanta. http://www.zonarsystems.com
