School Bus Transportation News at STN Media

School Charter Travel

Motorcoach travel by K-12 students for overnight trips is not uncommon. One-way trips of 400 miles or more for high school football games occurs every weekend throughout sparsely populated western and southwestern states, notably Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and elsewhere. Meanwhile, schools in urban certers, Detroit Public Schools for example, report that on any given school day it may have buses as far away as Toronto, Canada, as far south as Louisville, Kentucky and points in between.

How safe is this service? Can it be made safer?

Following several crashes involving motorcoach travel by students over the past decade, government officials, industry leaders, educators and motorcoach operators joined in efforts to tools that would help schools choose safer charter service. Several important guidelines, policies and Web sites were developed as a result of these efforts.

Now, four sets of guidelines -- by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the United Motorcoach Association, and New York State -- and three Web sites -- two by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and a third by Consolidated Safety Services, Inc. -- are available to give guidance in this critical area. The CSS Web site describes a passenger motor carrier quality assurance program modeled after a program developed for and utilized by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Links to each of these resources, and news and government reports about charter bus accidents, are given below.

	Oregon Officials Recognize Safety of Motorcoaches (December 2007) State of Oregon School Board permits vehicles for student and youth activity travel after previously stating it would ban the vehicles because they do not meet the same stringent federal motor vehicle safety standards as school buses.

	Five Killed as Charter Bus Slams into Stalled Semi (Oct. 2005) A charter bus returning from a band competition collided with a semi and killed five passengers including the driver. Most students on the bus were asleep when the accident occurred.

	FMCSA Launches Website for Charter/School Bus Information (Sept. 2004) The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has developed a new website for travelers-including school trip planners. The site provides safety information about local motorcoach, school bus and other transportation companies.

	SAFER: Safety & Fitness Electronic Records System The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Safety and Fitness Electronic Records System offers a searchable database of company safety data and related services of motor truck AND passenger motor carriers via the Internet. This Web site provides users with a snapshot of a passenger motor carrier's safety record. The site will tell users if the carrier is authorized to transport passengers for hire; has current insurance in force; the carrier's record of regulatory violations or "out-of-service" incidents such as when a vehicle or a driver is found to be in violation of the rules, and a comparison to national averages; the carrier's highway accident record; the carrier's current USDOT "safety rating," if any, and the date of the carrier's last "compliance review" or onsite inspection by authorities.

	NTSB Letter to United Motorcoach Association (Dec. 20, 2001) Safety Board reply to UMA letters inquiring about bus crashworthiness report. and place of motorcoach service in school charter travel.

	Public Meeting on Motorcoach Safety Improvements NHTSA and Transport Canada to hold April 30, 2002 public hearing in Washington, D.C. examining methods of improving passenger crash protection regulations for motorcoaches.

	Student Motorcoach Travel Safety Guide by the United Motorcoach Association

	Chartered Motorcoach Involved in School Activity-Trip Fatality This article about a weekend activity trip to Montreal by chartered motorcoach ended in two student fatalities. The article originally appeared in the May 1992 edition of School Transportation News.

	New York Public Transportation Safety Report State agency final report of the Gray Line Tours Of New York (International Bus Services) Fatal Bus Crash of April 11, 1992 resulting in two student fatalities.

	New York State Field Trip Guidelines for Travel by Charterbus On the web site of the New York Association for Pupil Transportation. The guidelines following the 1992 accident noted imediately above, and are based on an article that appeared in School Executives Bulletin

	Santa Fe, New Mexico National Transportation Safety Board Highway Accident Report about the March 2, 1999 motorcoach accident returning from student ski trip to Santa Fe Basin Ski, resulting in two student fatalities.

	Consolidated Safety Services (CSS) , based in Fairfax, VA, CSS conducts motor carrier safety inspections and safety "audits" for the Department of Defense, Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC), and select school districts.

	The Daecher Consulting Group , based outside Harrisburg, PA, the founder, Carmen Daecher, conducts safety audits, training and services for many commercial motorcoach and trucking concerns and has performed many motor carrier safety-consulting contracts for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Daecher also serves as safety consultant to the United Motorcoach Association (UMA).