School Buses are Unsafe?

As you know, I’m always on the lookout for interesting news articles to comment on, and today I found a good one (http://www.livescience.com/healthday/535932.html). Apparently, school buses are unsafe. I don’t know how my high school bus driver escaped scrutiny this long, but apparently, she and the crazy driver Jeffrey had his first year at Youree Middle School have been found out. Of course, it wasn’t even just the driver. It was the whole environment. They should have just asked me about this a long time ago, and it would have saved tons of time and money.

I’ve got a scar on the palm of my right hand from the school bus I rode on in Kindergarten. Who knew it wasn’t smart to hold yourself up between the seats and swing back and forth? Those darn seat springs just won’t stay behind that leather.

I remember when Mother drove a school bus and all the windows got shot out by a neighborhood kid with a BB gun. And it was cold the next morning. Not only did we have to dodge broken glass fragments, but think of all the germs from the runny noses.

I remember school bus “surfing” in high school. And it was the driver’s idea.

I remember being in a wreck in the school bus in high school. Never mind that it was the other guy’s fault. He rear ended us (it was more like parked under the rear end), didn’t have a driver’s license, and told the police that he couldn’t see us stopped at the red light. Okay, that was really more funny that dangerous, but it could have been a close call. And when it was all done, our driver still insisted on completing every last stop on the way to school, like some idiot kid would really sit out on the corner for 2.5 hours waiting on the bus. Needless to say, we didn’t pick anyone else up that day.

I remember a guy on the bus next to us getting shot one day. Of course, that guy went to Byrd, and it wasn’t on our bus, but it was definitely dangerous.

And I remember that first day Jeffrey was going to Youree Drive Middle School, and his bus driver was determined to get to Napoleon (the name of our street, which she pronounced napp-OH-lee-uhn) faster than anyone else. I don’t know who she was racing, but she hit at least 65 in the short block and a half distance from the corner to the bus stop. I really wasn’t sure I’d ever see my brother again, so I tipped the driver and said, “Light the fires, and kick the tires! Go, baby!” He came back later that day. Oh, well, it’s all good. He’s much more fun to have around now that he’s older.

So, you can see that this business about school buses being unsafe is not news to me, but let’s get back to the actual scientific study that validates my experiences. Apparently, there are roughly 17,000 children and teens that head to hospital emergency rooms each year because of injuries suffered while riding on or getting off of a school bus. Of course, my first thought was that I needed more information to really evaluate the situation.

How many kids actually ride school buses every year? Seventeen thousand seems like a really large number, but not if there are 20 billion kids on school buses. It turns out that there are 23.5 million kids on school buses each year according to the same article. They don’t do this simple math in the article, but that means that your child has a 0.07% chance of being injured on a school bus. Conversely, school buses are 99.93% safe. In round numbers, that’s one in a thousand odds. In spite of my experience, it seems like this article doesn’t really support its own theory.

Before we get too down on this article, though, there might be some useful information. The most interesting thing to me is that they say that the kids were treated in 99 different emergency rooms. I just did a quick Google search and found that there are 2,797 “emergency” rooms listed in the Dallas area alone. So, really, the critical piece of information missing in this article becomes, which specific school district has such a hard time keeping their kids safe on the bus? Is it mine? Is it yours?

Of course, they don’t say.