By Debbie Hersman
Statistically, the safest way for our children to get to school is on the school bus. In fact, less than 1 percent of fatalities involving school aged children (5-18 years) involve school buses.
Still, about 20 children per year are killed, typically after being struck by the bus or another vehicle during loading and unloading. This is why the area around an operating school bus is called the “danger zone.” This is School Bus Safety Week, and this year’s theme is, “I See the Driver. The Driver Sees Me!”
Because young children do not have the skills that come with time and experience dealing with traffic, it is up to adults to teach them about safety and more importantly to be safe drivers around school buses. Although there are rules of the road that require drivers to stop for buses and give pedestrians the right-of-way – tragically it doesn’t always work out that way. So please allow for extra time in the morning and be patient when school buses are loading children. We need to work together to reduce that number from twenty fatalities to zero.
NTSB Safety Compass Blog 