1. SDB Powerpoints
presents

2. School Bus Safety and Accident Prevention

3. Did You Know…
A full size school bus has 24 seats and can transport up to 72 young students. That’s about 3 times the average class size of an elementary school class.

4. And teachers do not supervise with their backs to their class while driving a huge commercial vehicle through rush hour traffic and changing road conditions.

5. This can, and does lead to distracted drivers.
If you are looking in the mirror constantly at what the students are doing, that is a sure recipe for disaster…

6. Don’t Let this happen to YOU!

7. Distractions are the #1 cause of accidents…

9. Children are four times more likely to cause driver distraction than adult passengers.

10. There is no safer way to transport a child than in a school bus
There is no safer way to transport a child than in a school bus. Fatal crashes involving occupants are extremely rare events, even though school buses serve daily in every community - a remarkable 8.8 billion student trips annually. Every school day, some 440,000 yellow school buses transport more than 24 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. Said another way to give perspective to the huge magnitude of pupil transportation, the equivalent of the populations of Florida, Massachusetts and Oregon ride on a school bus twice every day - almost always without a serious incident.

11. Consider these comparisons per 100,000,000 passenger miles: Passenger cars 0.94 deaths Scheduled airlines 0.06 deaths Passenger trains 0.04 deaths School buses 0.01 deaths

12. You, as a professional, can prevent accidents by simply remembering
Driving is a job that requires your full attention every time you get behind the wheel.
As a driver, you must always remember to reduce driver distractions and focus on the driving task
Your first responsibility is to road safety

13. A Few More Statistics…
"Four out of every five children are killed in a school bus related incident were killed while in the process of boarding or departing their school bus."  Pupil Transportation Institute
"One half the loading/unloading fatalities are children run over by their own bus."  February 2001 School Bus Fleet Magazine
"One half the students killed by the school bus are struck from the front and the remainder are struck by the side or rear of the bus."  CNN Facts
Over ninety percent of the accidents involving school buses can be attributed to the bus driver being distracted by student misbehavior on the school bus.  Silent Witness 1999

14. The Danger Zone

15. The Danger Zone refers to a ten foot blind spot entirely surrounding the school bus.
Most school bus-related fatalities occur when children are run over by their own school bus.
The second leading cause of school bus-related fatalities is children being struck by a passing vehicle.

16. Please again review this Danger Area…

17. The most critical part of the ride is boarding and departing the bus at the designated student stop.
Over 50% of loading and unloading deaths occur to children between the ages of five and seven.
Partly because they are small and harder to see.
Partly because they are not developmentally able to safely handle traffic situations on their own.
Children under age nine:
have 1/3 less peripheral vision than adults;
don’t judge the direction of sound well;
are impulsive, impatient, easily distracted and unpredictable.

18. Here are some tips to remember!
It’s up to you to ensure that tragedy never happens to students in your care.
Here are some tips to remember!

19. Remember
The bus driver must concentrate on what is happening outside the bus at bus stops.  Any distraction from the bus driver's task at the bus stop can result in a sudden and unchangeable tragedy.
Training students on the bus to remain seated, talk quietly, stay out of the bus aisle and to keep hands to self is as important as training kids in safe practices at their bus stops.

20. When children leave your bus, make sure they cross in FRONT of the bus
When children leave your bus, make sure they cross in FRONT of the bus. Do not allow them to go behind the bus. Also, take a quick count on how many students leave at the stop, and verify that they are all accounted for. Make sure they don’t duck around the stop arm, and again, make absolutely sure all students are accounted for before the bus is set back in motion!

21. Thank you for your time and attention, and if you have questions, please feel free to ask your trainer.
SDB Powerpoints.
03/08/2006