KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Aug. 20, 2008) — If Missouri pupil transporters were installing child restraints on school buses without knowing each child’s weight beforehand, they won’t be making the same mistakes again after attending the National Traffic Safety Administration’s "10 Common Mistakes Found on a School Bus" one-day course.

The training, which occurred on Monday and was repeated on Tuesday at Kansas City’s Children’s Mercy Hospital, taught pupil transportation professionals to avoid using the wrong seats, installing seat belts on seats that don’t meet federal FMVSS-210 requirements and a host of other common and potentially dangerous mistakes. Course instructor Sharon Conrad said school transporters are often thrown into transporting pre-school-age children without being offered the right education.

"With this kind of course, the school bus personnel are listening to you; they just have never been taught," Conrad said.

The course also introduced NHTSA’s new eight-hour course on child safety restraint systems for child passengers, which was recently presented at the STN EXPO in Reno, Nev. Conrad, an expert in occupant safety with the Georgia Department of Public Health, has been presenting a similar course aimed expanding the ranks of certified child passenger safety technicians around the country, recently appearing at conferences in Colorado and Louisiana.