NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2007

Bulge On The Bus; Drivers Fear For Safety Of Large Children In Small Seats
June 08, 2007

Local school bus drivers say children are getting larger and thus presenting a safety hazard on buses.

And they say the current transportation policy in the local boards, which allows 53 high school-aged students or 63 elementary students on buses rated to carry 72 passengers, leads to students being packed three to a seat.

That could be potentially deadly in a wreck because the 39-inch-wide seats are too narrow to hold three of today's students and their ubiquitous large backpacks. One student is always sitting halfway out in the aisle.

"If there's an accident, those kids are going to be flying straight down the aisle," cautioned Christine Brazeau, who has driven a school bus for Stock Transportation for eight years.

"Kids seem to be bigger than they used to be, and when you have 48 kids on a bus, that's fine, because they're two to a seat," agreed Ron Green, who has driven for Stock for six years.

"But that 49th kid, he has to sit with two other people and so does everyone who gets on after him, and a 39-inch seat just isn't big enough."

A committee of drivers from Stock recently took their concerns to the Limestone District School Board's transportation committee. Drivers asked that the number of passengers allowed on school buses be capped at 48 - or two per seat.

The drivers also say the student code of conduct - which prohibits rowdy behaviour, eating or drinking and vandalism - is inconsistently applied by schools, which also poses a dangerous distraction for drivers.

The drivers say crowding students three to a seat makes bad behaviour worse and distracts drivers, which raises more safety concerns.

"We've all seen this problem," said Roy Willis, who drives a bus for special-needs children. He said more than 100 local drivers from different companies recently gathered to discuss overcrowding of buses and other safety issues.

"As soon as you get more than two to a seat you start having problems."

The board gave the drivers a half-hour to make their case at a recent meeting, but made no decision on their requests to lower the bus capacity.

Local busing is overseen by the Tri-Board Student Transportation Services, which runs buses in the Limestone, Hastings-Prince Edward, and Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic boards. It is a huge daily operation, with more than 36,000 students taking 645 bus routes to 164 schools.

Manager Steve Wowk says the board uses a sophisticated computer program to assign students to buses, as well as feedback from drivers, and that only rarely would more than 48 high- schoolers be assigned to the same bus.

"Forty-eight on the bus is our practice," he said, noting the capacity would also be lowered if the computer noticed that a large number of Grade 6, 7 or 8 students were assigned to a single bus. "I find some kids in Grade 6 as big today as Grade 9 students used to be," he said.

But the drivers are hoping other bus drivers, in local boards and across the province, will join the campaign and parents will also put pressure on boards to formally lower the capacity of buses.

They have also written to MP Peter Milliken and MPP John Gerretsen in hopes of enlisting their support and asking for help raising the wages paid to drivers, which they say would help the industry attract and keep veteran drivers.

There are 86 bus companies, large and small, providing vehicles to local school boards. They are under contracts that legally oblige them to provide a certain number of buses and are not taking part in the drivers' campaign because lowering the number of children on them could require the boards to put more buses on the road.

There is no question that children are getting bigger younger. A major study by the Centres For Disease Control found that between 1963 and 2002, the mean weight of children under the age of 11 increased from approximately 65 pounds to almost 74 pounds, while among those between 12 and 17, boys weigh 15 pounds more than they did 40 years ago and girls weigh 12 pounds more.

They are both also approximately one inch taller than they were in the 1960s. Over the last 25 years, according to data collected by Statistics Canada, the number of teens classified as overweight has more than doubled, and those classified as "obese" has tripled.

Richard Donaldson, executive director of the Ontario School Bus Association, which represents 200 companies that operate 13,000 buses in Ontario, agrees the standard-sized seat is too small to take more than two modern-day schoolchildren, particularly teenagers.

"It's pretty clear that if you've got three high-schoolers in one seat, that's a half-passenger too many," he said, noting that two elementary students each lugging a large backpack could also take up more room than the seat safely allows. "The backpacks kids carry are bigger than some of the kids these days," he said.

"In the old days, we used to get on the bus and all we would be carrying would be a bag holding our lunch," agreed Brazeau. "That's really changed over the years."

While most buses come from the factory rated for 72 passengers, each board sets the allowable number of passengers and has the discretion to raise or lower that number. The drivers say many buses routinely carry more than the number of students set by the board and that drivers cannot refuse to let a student board even if the bus is at its capacity.

The buses used in Canada are identical to those in the United States - the basic body-on-frame design has not changed in 50 years and is still similar to the farm truck that was its mechanical predecessor- and overcrowding on buses concerns safety groups there, such as the National Coalition for School Bus Safety, a watchdog and pro-seatbelt lobby group.

Dr. Alan Ross, president of the group, said that it reviewed some recent measurements of school-aged children and they show that students cannot safely sit three to a seat.

"The average girth of the students in that study - there's no delicate way to put this except to say that's the measurement of their butts - was 22 inches. That doesn't add up to three a seat; you cannot make the math work."

He noted school buses are designed so that in a crash, the students would slide forward and the impact would be cushioned by the padded back of the seat ahead.

Known as "compartmentalization," it has been a part of bus design since 1977 and is the key passenger safety factor in buses, cited every time there is a debate on installing seatbelts on them.

But he noted that a child sitting outside that safety zone would be unprotected in a wreck.

"Overfilling of school buses is a problem because that padding that you're talking about is only effective if the child is in the seat, and if there are three to a seat, one child is outside that safety compartment."

He also noted that crash tests on school buses are performed with two child-sized dummies in a seat and not three, making them unreliable indicators of how the vehicle would protect children in a crash.

The local drivers say students should enjoy the same level of safety in the bus that they do in the classroom, noting the bus is considered a part of the school.

"We are an extension of the classroom because the moment we pick the kids up, they are under the jurisdiction of the school board," Green said, who remembers driving a bus with 69 students as a new driver. "We really feel that this is a safety issue."

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