Change is needed after band bus accident

At schools in Glen Head, Glenwood Landing and Sea Cliff, their own transportation depot conducts inspections by mechanics employed and contracted by the district, and a bus must pass a second inspection before it can leave the depot.”

The horrific charter bus accident on Orange County’s Interstate 84 on Sept. 21 that claimed the lives of a band director and a retired teacher while injuring 16 members of Farmingdale High School’s marching band should be a wake-up call for change. The procedure for ensuring that a charter bus is safe for travel — an inspection, now conducted by the owner of the bus company — should be augmented by the school districts themselves whenever any trip involves our most precious cargo.
Many school districts hire charter bus companies they deem safe by considering past driving records, hiring practices and inspection procedures. A state transportation department spokesman told reporters after the accident that the charter bus, operated by Regency Transportation of Nesconset, had undergone its semiannual inspection in August, and passed.
While it isn’t clear whether there was another inspection before the bus left for the marching band camp in Greeley, Pennsylvania, investigators believe the crash was caused by a faulty front tire. One last inspection — especially by a qualified school district official — possibly could have found the problem, and the outcome of that day might have been quite different.
That’s already happening at schools in Glen Head, Glenwood Landing and Sea Cliff on the North Shore, where their own transportation depot, built in 2006, conducts inspections by mechanics employed and contracted by the district. A bus must pass a second inspection before it can leave the depot.
North Shore Schools superintendent Chris Zublionis says that having the depot saves the district money, and brings in revenue when its employees work on buses from other districts. It also gives them all the control necessary to ensure that buses are safe.
The school district’s charter and regular yellow buses all have seat belts, as do yellow buses rented by other districts. Most charter buses have seat belts, too. Initial reports from the Farmingdale accident, however, indicated that none of the 40 students and four adults on the bus were wearing seat belts when it careened 50 feet down a steep slope near Wawayanda after crashing through a guardrail. Several of the injured passengers were ejected.
AAA spokesman Robert Sinclair says that bus passengers should wear seat belts, although many yellow buses from various school districts don’t have them.
“The expense of having them in a school bus is paid for by school districts,” Sinclair said, “and since school buses are the safest vehicle on the road, statistically — with very few crashes — schools may not want to incur the expense.
“It would have been beneficial,” he added, “if they had been wearing them in this accident.”
But the benefits of wearing a seat belt on a bus aren’t as clear as, say, for a regular passenger car, Zublionis said. One theory is that a seat belt could stop a child from escaping from a bus in an emergency. But Zublionis — along with other superintendents the Herald spoke with — supports wearing one, although no school district requires students to do so.
That needs to change. Sinclair said that it’s far more common for seat belts to protect passengers in a charter bus accident than to be a detriment.
And it wouldn’t be hard to make the change. Before a bus departs, a chaperone or teacher could instruct students to buckle their seat belts, demonstrate how it’s done, and then ensure that they are properly secured — as airline flight attendants do before takeoff.
Taking simple steps like these is the least we could do in light of the Farmindale High tragedy. This is an opportunity for school districts to be proactive, and make a few changes — like taking control of bus inspections, and ensuring that seat belts are worn. And the state education department could help, too, by sending bus safety guidelines to schools.
Everyone — from parents to school districts to bus operators — wants to protect our children, whether they're in the classroom or on the road. Taking these common-sense steps will help ensure that this happens.