You might not expect to hear teen slang like “YOLO” roll off the tongues of many state directors of pupil transportation, yet the term took on a whole new meaning on the final day of the NASDPTS Conference last Wednesday. Todd Watkins, transportation director at Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, discussed his district’s unique safety awareness program, “YOLO: You Only Live Once.”
The name of the campaign created by the Montgomery County Department of Transportation reflects input from the high school students who aided in its development, said Watkins. The DOT partnered with MCPS earlier this year to spread the word on the risks of distracted walking and other dangerous pedestrian behavior.
“In the period I’ve been at Montgomery County (since 1996), we’ve had zero fatalities on school buses, yet we’ve had several fatalities among student walkers. Different things have led to situations when kids have been injured or even killed. Often we’ve found students either walking with earphones or texting while walking,” Watkins told STN. “The reality is, if we could get students to act more safely when they walk, I think many of these (incidents) could be prevented, so that’s the target of the campaign.”
He noted that they wanted to make the YOLO campaign materials — including posters, Web resources, examples of social media posts and more — available for other school administrators to download off the MCPS site and use for their district. The program even developed a hashtag, #YOLOwalksafe, for the trending of articles and posts on social media sites related to school pedestrian safety.
Watkins stressed that the NASDPTS conference was the ideal place to discuss the new campaign because safety is top of mind for everyone there, whether they work at the state or local level.
“Compared to riding the school bus, the part of the travel that gets you to the bus stop — walking, or walking all the way to school — certainly does not have the same rate of safety,” he said. “Being on the school bus is the safest form of transportation, so anything else is less safe including walking. I think everybody struggles with this because most students have to do some walking to get to the bus stop.”
He added that the vast majority of student fatalities in his area occurred while they were walking to school.
“Sometimes I think we get so involved in bus issues, myself included, that we forget the whole other element of student transportation that involves walking,” Watkins continued. “And we aren’t just bus folks – we’re also transportation folks. All of that transportation doesn’t happen on a school bus, which is an important reminder.”
He said he believes the YOLO campaign has already benefitted many district students who walk to schools and bus stops each day. The program was introduced to all county high schools this fall — a big undertaking considering MCPS is the largest school district in Maryland, with 25 high schools, 36 middle schools and 141 elementary schools. The student population exceeds 154,000, and Watkins estimated that about two-third ride yellow buses to and from school.
He credited the high school students involved in the design of YOLO for making the program a success. After all, they came up with the catchy slogans and graphics gracing the posters being displayed on all middle and high school campuses.
“The posters target all kinds of issues that have led to student injuries and fatalities here in the county, between the texting and talking on the phone, to listening to music and not crossing at the crosswalk, to wearing dark clothing that makes them difficult to see. These are the issues we’ve struggled with,” he said.
