SchoolBus.org.uk Improving school bus safety in the UK & winning.
School Bus Safety Group
We are protecting children on school transport from death & injury by changing safety perceptions. This we are now doing & school bus safety has never had a higher agenda since we started in 2006.
We are now asked for advice UK wide & in fact have turned into a UK wide service that can help & inform parents of their rights, as well as ensuring local authorities are kept up to date with current legislation, which prior to this rarely happened.
School bus safety would never of changed, or in fact be on the agenda if our group had not raised it. Local Authorities are only now listening & changing safety due to pressure from us, there have been deaths & injuries in local authority areas for over 30 years UK wide, did they change anything, NO, deaths & injuries kept happening & continue to do so. We have also had praise from both Westminster & Scottish Governments for the work we do & for not giving up, when the going got tough.
We are the only group in the UK solely involved in School Bus Safety.
We are not a charity,simply parents who have our children sadly killed or badly damaged through brain injury. With many children left wheel chair bound, some with a memory span of 3 minutes, can you imagine your child left like this, or worse, saying goodbye to them in the morning & never seeing them again, at least alive.
We do not raise money to pay staff nor hold fancy meetings, nor do we involve children in road safety schemes with banners,we simply concentrate on one issue, the main issue,trying to change the law on school bus safety. It seems many charities are money making businesses with in fact very large turnovers, this is not about money, its about saving lives!At least this is how we see it!
Making money out of road safety is not the way ahead,changing the law is! Others charities concentrate on the teaching side, the problem with that is that all scientific evidence points to the opposite.
Children are not mini adults, they do not have an adults understanding of danger & in fact never will.So there has to be other ways which we concentrate on, namely changing the law.
Description
Excerpted from the website:
- Over years the school bus sign has been left on during bus trips, OAP outings, Tours, they have been bolted on, stuck on & are sometimes even inserted in the destination board
We chose this name as it perfectly sums up our site, School Bus! Over many years, in the UK as well as world wide, school children have been killed or left injured.
This group started after two children were knocked down & killed in September 2008 in Aberdeenshire Scotland, however we now work UK wide, & my own grand daughter left wheel chair bound [ in 2004] after being knocked down by a carelss motorist[ who was fined for doing so ] passing the school bus, she was them 8 years old.
This happens UK wide & accidents recognise postcodes.
We would add The children concerned had left the bus stop, none of the children had walked out carelessly from the bus, nor in front of a any car. All drivers should of seen the pupils starting to cross the road, as i expect most would see a dog? Robyn had started to cross road when she was hit ! Alexander was at the verge on his side of the road, a foot fall from safety! Erin was virtually at the kerb on her side of the road!
We would also add, none were wearing iPod's or using a mobile phone, as many would like to point out they were. They were leaving school transport, as they were taught to do,as all parents teach their child to do, observing road safety .
Visit our website www.schoolbus.org.uk & read about how we are trying to change drivers perceptions that is always the children at fault.
Visit www.1second1life.co.uk & see how this video informs school pupils & drivers.
Additional Information
Our group has had two petitions before the Scottish Parliament petitions committee. Hopefully now with some success, they are listening, as are local authorities, most realise that after 30 odd years of no improvement, school transport needs brought up to date. We have met with the Under Secretary of Transport & now await the changes possibly proposed & we meet & are involved with Govenment departments & other safety organisations. We are also involved with & support www.safeway2school.com which is an EU organsation based in Sweden.
We welcome the fact that there is now a realisation change needs to happen. The only problem is things move so slowly, our fear is another familY has to go throught the pain & suffering of losing a child or having one left wheel chairbound & brain damaged during this waiting time. Stats 19 figures are not 100% accurate & tend to under estimate. School bus accidents are treated as pedestian accidents,not a bus accident, so totally accurate figures are hard to come by.
Visit our website www.schoolbus.org.uk & read about how we are trying to change drivers perceptions that is always the children at fault
Most accidents happen as they leave the bus in late afternoon.
Many are caused by motorists speeding past the school bus as it unloads , or by drivers not make allowances for the kids & teenagers reactions.
What a sad reflection on drivers, is it so hard to slow down passing the bus? A child would quite possibly survive an accident if hit at 20mph, at 30 very serious injuries & possible death,at 40 mph almost certain death.
We are trying to change the law to make school transport safer, we are trying to change safety perceptions, we are tryin to show, regardless of what drivers say, children are not always to blame,but we come against opposition for trying to change the law .
We would like to see vehicles banned from passing the bus as it unloads, school buses with better visibility & extra safety measures. Larger signs front & rear, flashing signs front & rear, signs properly displayed & legislation tightened up on these matters, there has to be legal teeth ensuring this happens. The school bus safety sign removed when no pupils are being carried, its left on many buses when out of school contract.This also confuses drivers as they are unsure if pupils are aboard the bus or not.
We have even see the sign displayed on football runs & in fact bus tours, stencilled on to some buses, displayed behind tinted glass which is illegal, & quite often displayed behind glass. This stops the reto effect the sign was designed to have so it does not reflec as it legally should, of course not counting the worn safety signs that can hardly be seen, & of course those displayed incorrectly, the sign is supposed to be clearly visable.
Yet we come against opposition , the strange thing is ,those who oppose what we do, who tell this wont work , it will hold traffic up , or cause delays, are parents or grand parents themselves.
You are only saving minutes on your journey, its been worked out by computor programes.On long journeys you might save 15 minutes on your journey time, by forgetting about those 15 minutes you could save a life.
We would urge all drivers to pass the school bus with the same care & respect they would expect another driver to have for thier own children leaving the school bus
I suppose its fine until someone passing the bus when their children are aboard knocks a child down. Maybe be then they will realise that we all need to take care around children.
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