Helping Drivers Contend with 'DWJ'

By Jim Ellis,
Special to School Transportation News

I am one of the lucky few who can actually use mass transit to commute to work. I live in a small town 40 miles out of Syracuse, N.Y., where the PTSI office is located. I have a one-hour bus ride each morning and night. Part of the suburban transit line, I ride a coach bus with comfy seats, and it's seldom crowded. In the morning I usually work on my laptop, and in the afternoon I read the New York Times for about half the ride and nap the rest.

I'm only half-joking when I say it's the best part of my day.

But every so often an errand forces me to drive to work. Probably because I don't drive every day, the driving habits of my fellow commuters really make an impact (ahem). Even on the residential streets I use for the early legs of my commute, I see motorists sliding through stop signs as though they were yield signs and pulling out in front of each other (and me) without hesitation. And once I get on the interstate into the city, the speed and aggressiveness with which people drive is unnerving. I am not a pokey driver, but car after car rides my tail, waiting for a chance to whip around me, quickly cutting in front of me with a few feet to spare - in heavy traffic at highway speeds.

Am I just getting crotchety, or are there more rushing motorists than when I first drove a school bus? Well, there definitely are more motorists. The number of vehicles on the road has more than doubled in the past generation, while the miles of roadway has stayed nearly the same.

But there is every reason to believe that it's not just the number, but the attitudes and skills of the motorists that have changed. Most respected national traffic safety organizations have drawn the same conclusion: an epidemic of rude, aggressive driving has overtaken our roadways.

I suspect ignorance is also a factor in the poor driving habits we see in the motoring public. Negotiating the traffic circle near my house, for instance, is not for the faint of heart. Many motorists today just don't seem to understand the basic rules of the road. Young people often start driving without adequate preparation. Parents are too busy to spend the time necessary to make their child a really good driver, not just someone barely able to pass the state road test. Driver's Ed courses have been cut in many school districts. And even where they survive, the effectiveness of high school driver's education is in question. The NTSB recently issued a report highly critical of the methodology of high school driver education courses.

Factor in the groundless overconfidence of some motorists driving SUVs, who think they can whip in and out of traffic in any weather conditions, and driving to work isn't much fun.

This is the driving environment our school bus drivers must contend with. I wonder if I'd be able to maintain my cool and professionalism if I was driving a bus now. The ability of a bus driver to avoid an accident all year long is pretty amazing considering how much "DWJ" (Driving While Jerk) they encounter every day.

There are many implications for loading and unloading safety procedures in this degraded driving environment. For instance, the importance of picking the safest possible location for a bus stop is heightened by the fact that it is virtually a certainty motorists will pass the bus, and training the kids about how to protect themselves as they get on and off the bus takes on even greater importance. I have talked with transportation managers who seem unaware that drivers have the capability to train kids and, more disturbingly, seem unaware of how important that task is to student safety.

Every school bus driver that goes a year without a preventable accident in today's nerve-racking driving environment is deserving of recognition in my book. If we really want to improve high school driver's ed, maybe we should let school bus drivers teach it.