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Every day, in
communities all over the United States, school children ride buses to
attend extra-curricular activities. The commercial motor vehicles (CMV),
whether they are yellow school buses or motor coaches, are the safest
passenger vehicles operating on the highway. Too often, however, we hear
of catastrophic crashes involving students riding on these types of buses,
and we subsequently learn that the cause of the crash was driver, not
vehicle, related.
The Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has been charged to significantly
reduce the number of fatalities resulting from all types of CMV crashes,
regardless of whether they are "interstate" in nature. In order to achieve
this goal, the FMCSA must employ safety strategies that exceed its traditional
scope of enforcement programs to improve the safety of transportation
performed by motor carriers and individuals that it does not regulate.
"Moving Kids Safely - by Bus" is one of these strategies.
Objective:
Improve the way that bus companies are selected for transporting students
to extra-curricular activities, by working with the States to develop
and implement a method to eliminate unsafe bus companies from consideration.
This initiative will result in the use of safer bus companies (operating
yellow buses or motor coaches) to transport school kids, and an increased
awareness of safety by those competing for the student transportation
market.
Strategy:
The FMCSA will facilitate a meeting in each State involving representatives
of the education, pupil transportation, motor coach transportation, and
highway safety organizations throughout the State. The objective is to
identify the problem, to develop a simple process of identifying unsafe
motor carriers, and to agree to implement the process uniformly throughout
the State. The outcome being sought is that pupil transportation managers
in every State will consider safety when creating lists of bus companies
that are used by local school trip planners to transport students on field
trips and extra-curricular activities.
The FMCSA has
worked with a cross-section of partners at the National level in developing
the strategy and materials to help implement this field initiative. These
partners have committed to work with us locally, to facilitate the meetings
and to implement this safety program initiative.
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