School bus drivers encounter many hazards on the job, navigating different types of roads and traffic crossings. At the recent NAPT Summit, Operation Lifesaver Inc. (OLI) President and CEO Joyce Rose announced that a new interactive educational tool designed to help bus drivers safely navigate railroad crossings on their routes would debut in 2014.
Since 1972 the nonprofit OLI has provided public education programs to prevent collisions, injuries and fatalities on and around railroad tracks and highway–rail grade crossings. Every school day, some 480,000 yellow buses convey children to and from school, over roads with more than 200,000 railroad grade crossings.
This is why it is imperative that bus drivers understand how to proceed safely when approaching such crossings, Rose told transportation officials at the summit. Last year, nearly 40,000 school bus drivers received OLI crossing safety presentations, with more than 1,000 drivers completing its video-based school bus driver safety course, according to Rose.
All of OLI’s state programs provide safety training and educational materials, including videos and PowerPoint games, that have been specially designed for school bus drivers.
Rose emphasized that OLI has had a strong relationship with the pupil transportation industry in the past four decades. Two years ago the organization partnered with the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, which has posted safety information online to assist school bus drivers in avoiding potentially disastrous collisions with trains.
“Fortunately, there have been very few rail-crossing collisions that involve school buses in the last century, and we have not had a fatal school bus rail-crossing incident in the United States since 2000,” said Rose. “However, the consequences of a school bus–related crossing incident are unthinkably awful.”
The new, interactive OLI school bus driver e-Learning program will be available to school districts, bus companies and driver training schools on their website, free of charge, in January 2014. Rose noted that the school bus operations may easily incorporate OLI’s e-learning program into existing driver training programs for a modest licensing fee.
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with the pupil transportation industry and building on the safety gains we’ve seen,” she said. “While our face-to-face safety education efforts will continue, new tools, including online technology, will help us to dramatically expand the audience for our lifesaving messages and materials.”
NAPT attendees had the opportunity to “test drive” the new school bus driver e-learning program with OLI Vice President Wende Corcoran at a separate session.
