When I was younger everyone rode the school bus. Very few children were picked up by their parents, granted that many nineties kids were latch key kids. I happened to be one of them. This was a direct reflection on the tidal wave of the huge divorcing trend that happened in the late eighties and throughout the turn into the Twenty-first Century. No more were there June Cleaver’s waiting with an afternoon snack after you walked home from the bus stop. I personally felt free and responsible. After school was a time to socialize and that socialization started on the bus. Plans were made and we orchestrated our agendas as was allotted by our parents, but still for a while, you were the head of the household for a short while and it felt good. Again I speak of my experience. I always thought that I would do the same thing, but time went by and my first accident involved a school bus. Needless to say that I was weary of them by on principal of my experience.
Contrastingly, my dream of my daughter and the bus contorted over the years as I have noticed a trend of reports of school bus fatalities and injuries. Like most new moms I have a tendency to google up anything and so I started investigating more on the actual statistics of school transportation accidents. According, to the U.S Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who recorded that “between 2003 and 2012, there were 89 crashes in which at least one occupant of a school transportation vehicle died. More than half of those crashes (58%) involved at least one other vehicle. Impacts to the front of the school transportation vehicle occurred in 49 percent and impacts to the right side of the school transportation.(2014)” Also, the NHTSA studies indicated that the earlier in the day starting at seven in the morning that the collision rate increased and after three o’clock were the most dangerous times for fatalities.
Interestingly it seems that many bus accidents are something that is now becoming an issue that is being brought to the forefront of news. Some schools are now ordering school buses that have individual seat belts in response to the high amount of danger children face in a government issued vehicle. Regardless in my head, I had always pictured crying as my child was shuttled off to the world in that iconic yellow machine and carted off to that new world of grammar school and that bubble has been burst forever.
In conclusion I decided that I would become a carpool mom, lanyard and all. I feel that these charts clearly show that a vehicle is far safer than a bus for children. This is both in terms of total number of accidents and fatalities. I made a decision to be the mom and I will do whatever I can to keep her safe. I hope I'm not taking away good things that come from riding the bus that I treasure about my own youth, but if I can drive her and keep her safe so I shall.
Department of Transportation. (2014). School-Transportation-Related Crashes. Retrieved September 3, 2016, from https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPu...
