1) There are 17,000 emergency room admissions due to school bus injuries every year. ( Do a Google search on the words: "School bus injury emergency room")
2) School buses are top heavy and subject to roll over. There are usually no escape hatches on the roofs and this complicates rescue.
3) When school buses do roll over children tumble from their seats causing impact injury to themselves and crushing other children.
4) We do NOT know if children are safer when riding to and from school ( specifically) in a properly secured safety seat with the parent driving. These studies have **never** been done!
5) A very sad injury that could be completely prevented with adult supervision are crushing and dragging injuries. On occasion a child's clothing or back pack strap will get caught in the school bus door and these children are dragged by their buses. The other injury occurs when a child drops an item in front of the bus, leans over to pick it up, and the bus driver ( thinking they have cleared the bus) starts the bus and crushes the child. This happened twice in my county within two years and in both cases the child was killed instantly.
5) Social environment: There is sexual, physical, and emotional bullying on buses. Anecdotally, my daughter learned the "F" word on her kindergarten bus.
You know, I really don’t care.
It was good for me to get bullied in middle school. Inspired me to work out and learn self defense. I was on the boxing team in military school. Being bullied taught me that life isn’t always fair. I must admit, I still have a desire to kick his ass 40 years later. Actually, it was 2 guys.
They should appoint the toughest guys on each bus to be “monitors”.
Maybe some people who are collecting unemployment should be told to ride school buses as a condition for continuing to receive checks. Not a paid posiiton — just an expectation from the Unemployment Office.
Simple cure:
Video the passengers—It’ll give the BULLYING evidence you need.
Kick off the bad ones—let ‘em walk.
Problem: SOLVED.
The government is only concerned when gay sissies get bullied about being gay.
Thnx for this...good topic.
I never let my kid go on a public school bus after, on his first day as a first grader, he was asked at the end of the day, what bus he was on so he pointed to one and they promptly put him on it. It was the wrong bus. He didn’t get off with the other kids in our neighborhood so when I freaked and called the school, the vice principal said, “oh well, he’ll just ride it and come back here.”
I had my lawyer on speed dial...and put him in a Catholic school the next year with parents doing the car pool.
Unbelievable.
I rode a school bus to and from school, 1950s-1960s, until I was 17. There was never any of this going on, even though for part of the ride there was standing room only.
What is the difference today? Simple fact is the majority of today’s children simply are not taught how to conduct themselves in a respectful and respectable manner.
Where to begin?
Eliminate the tyrannical, inconsiderate, bullying rule of the school buses clogging the roads all day, every day now.
Eliminate the neurotically overprotective parents who can’t just let the kids wait and quickly board by themselves.
Eliminate all taxes on folks like me for other people’s kids and their non-education.
Let the kids walk.
Let the kids handle the so-called bullying epidemic by teaching them a few quickly-incapacitating tactics.
Have more kids, and then just let natural selection sort out who’s scrappy enough to make it.
If you’re waiting for a sarcasm tag, you’ll be disappointed.
there are no consequences for bad behavior on the bus. this encourages bad behavior. the driver cannot stop the bus and oust the offender, they cannot kick the kid off the bus, even for a few days. and whenever something goes wrong it’s always the drivers fault. and he has no rights to discipline the kids, adn the kids know it.
In response to your first #5, there are ways to prevent the crushing and dragging injuries. I drove a school bus in NC back in the 70’s (when high school students were still allowed to be bus drivers). I remember the training. The most dangerous part of driving the bus was the pasenger stop. They taught us that there was 14 steps to a passenger stop. One step in particular was, “Count and recount.” If they are getting on the bus, you count the kids before you open the door, then recount them as they get on. Or if getting off, count them as they leave, then again as they walk away from the bus stop. DO NOT MOVE THE BUS UNTIL YOUR COUNTS MATCH!!!
Unless you live in a rural area where the school is miles away, there is no reason to bus kids to school. In the cities and even out in most suburbs, schools are usually within easy walking distance. I would say three miles should be the threshold and I think I'm being generous.
Hell, I walk my dog for an hour each morning before work (about four miles) so it's not like I'm asking kids to do something I don't already do myself. During those morning walks, I see all kinds of nutty stuff. Overprotective parents who literally drive their kids to the bus stop which might only be a few houses down the street. There they sit with idling engines, waiting for the bus, while their kid sits in the passenger seat texting on their iPhones and wearing flip-flops and shorts (even though it might be thirty degrees outside).
I say, make the kids walk! I'm surprised the crunchy-granola liberals don't get on board here. All those idling cars and diesel-burning buses clogging up our roadways. Make the planet greener and cure the childhood obesity problem all in one fell swoop - make the kids WALK to school!