Last night, I was listening to John Bowman describe how school buses work in the US. He talked about the coloring of the buses, the laws requiring cars to stop whenever students are getting on or off the bus, etc. Those policies undoubtedly make school buses safer, but I'm not sure any of those would have made a difference yesterday. Right now, I'm having trouble imagining a scenario that doesn't include "the bus was going too fast". Unless the bus's brakes failed, all the other factors people have mentioned – poor road conditions, road works, aging fleet – could have been accounted for by the driver slowing down.
I spent most of my school days on school buses. I can remember when our school district installed little clock-like meters that recorded the speed of the bus throughout its journey. That was at least 25 years ago. I wonder if the bus involved in yesterday's crash had a similar device? If yes, the investigators will be able to determine exactly how the fast the bus was traveling and match that information with what they know about the condition of the road at the time.
There is a lot of talk today about seat belts. I'm a great believer in seat belts and would love to imagine that if every school bus had seat belts that all the kids on the bus would wear them. However, I'm not convinced that they would and I half suspect that the "cool" option would be to skip the belts. It would be very difficult for a bus driver to enforce a seat belt policy, but they should be there at least as an option. At a minimum, you could probably convince younger kids to wear them and maybe over a period of time school kids would adjust to wearing them without giving them a thought. I hope so.
Regardless of whether there are seat belts or not, bus drivers must insist that every child sits down and stays seated until the bus stops. I have seen Irish school buses on the road with kids standing up or kneeling on seats. I can remember from my own days that whenever someone was standing up or there was even a hint of any trouble the driver would stop the bus and just sit there until things settled down.
Maintaining order on a school bus is important. Fights or rowdiness are a real distraction. In my school the bus fleet was owned and operated by the school district. The school authorities were responsible for maintaining the bus fleet, hiring the drivers and, crucially, enforcing discipline. Reports of misbehavior from the bus driver to the school resulted in detentions and/or suspensions. This was a big part of what kept order on the buses. I don't know if this is how things work here, but the bus invovled in yesterday's crash was operated by Bus Eireann, which I imagine puts the school at a greater remove from what happens on a bus.
