Beware of School Buses in Parking Lots
Has your child’s school designed a safe system for dropping off and picking up children? Does it have enough adult supervision to make sure children are walking where they are supposed to be walking?
Last January, in a small community in southern Virginia, after school had been in session for months, a young pre-kindergarten student was killed when he was hit by a school bus – in the school parking lot. There was no need for such a tragedy to happen.
There was no need for the child to have been walking through the parking lot where buses would be moving; however, the drop off and pick up system used by the school required children to walk in the parking lot to get from the bus to the sidewalk. A young child of four could not have known the danger he was in when he got off the bus and walked in front of it to get to the sidewalk.
I personally know the family who lost their child in southern Virginia. Since learning of that tragedy, I read about another child in New Jersey, a twelve-year-old girl, who was hit by a school bus while walking in the school parking lot. There were no designated pedestrian paths or crosswalks.
These incidents show what happens when a school system does not devote time and resources to preparing a safe parking lot design or plan for getting children safely to and from the buses, including providing sufficient supervision.
Statistically, school buses are one of the safest modes of transportation. (According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over 25 million students are in school with an average of 500,000 school buses on the roads.) With more than twice as many children being killed while getting on or off school buses than while riding in them, I wonder why we can’t get that part right.
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