School Bus Fleet Blog
Wes Platt
Former Executive Editor
[Archives] Join us in an open-ended conversation about children and school buses – and the people who bring them together from SBF's editorial team and guest authors.
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SEARCHMENUSEARCHWes Platt
Former Executive Editor
[Archives] Join us in an open-ended conversation about children and school buses – and the people who bring them together from SBF's editorial team and guest authors.
The horrific beating of a 13-year-old school bus passenger by three 15-year-olds has sparked heated media coverage recently. It seems that most of the ire has been aimed at the bus driver, with many observers suggesting that he should have done more to help the victim. The uproar raises a few nagging questions in my mind. ...
Read More →In the August 2013 issue of SBF, I wrote a feature titled “Tips and Tools to Select Safe Stops,” where pupil transportation officials from operations around the country shared with me various components to ensuring that their bus stop locations are safe for students. Here, I’ll share with you some of their tips and insight that didn’t make it into the feature.
Read More →There’s no good way around it: We have to turn left sometimes, often without the “protection” of a solid green arrow. For school bus drivers, training to “perfect the art” of knowing the bus and how to steer it will allow them to focus on watching out for objects in the intersection. ...
Read More →A big step was recently made on the road to recovery at Alabama's Dale County Schools following the death of bus driver Charles Poland: a new driver has been assigned to his former route. The Dothan Eagle reports that Melinda Campbell has connected with Poland's passengers by talking about him. This got me thinking about how pupil transportation operations cope with tragedy.
Read More →By and large, people who work in pupil transportation do what they do because they care about kids. Likewise, I'm convinced that most folks who work in pupil transportation also care about people in general. That came to mind when I heard about what pupil transporters in Little Egg Harbor, N.J., are doing. ...
Read More →My jaunt took place at BusWest, a Thomas Built Buses dealership in Carson, Calif., and I drove a Saf-T-Liner C2 unit. Driving a school bus was a goal that we at SBF set so that I could get a better sense of what school bus drivers face on a daily basis in terms of maneuvering such a large vehicle on the road.
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