How Do You Talk to Your Kids About School Bus Safety?
More than 20 million children ride the bus to and from school. What do you stress to yours about how to stay safe?
OK, parents, a pop quiz: What’s the largest public transportation system in the U.S.?
The answer: school buses. About 22.5 million kids ride them, resulting in more than 94.2 billion student-passenger miles each year.
The good news is that according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, “school buses are the safest mode of transportation for getting children back and forth to school.”
Still, accidents can happen. According to the National Safety Council, loading and unloading are the most dangerous parts of the bus ride for students.
Many organizations provide safety rules for riding the school bus, including this pamphlet from the National Safety Council and this primer written for kids from Kids Health.
They include the basics, like forming a line 10 feet from the curb or “five giant steps” away, waiting until the bus stops to get on or off, and never walking behind the bus and making sure if you’re walking in front of it, to do so when the driver can see you and with at least 10 feet of space between you and the bus.
How do you talk to your kids about the importance of staying safe on the way to school? What do you stress about the rules of riding the bus?
David Greenberg
10:43 am on Monday, August 20, 2012
Easy - tell your kids that they can be seriously injured or killed. To drive the point home for kids that don't get the point, simulate an injury and let them experience what the issues are for a day.
Broken leg? Put a different sized shoe or an air cast on their foot. Add some giant amount of bandages. Let them wear it for a day and try to play, or climb stairs, etc...
Head injury? Wrap their head with bandages. Cover an eye. Let them deal with that for a day.
Broken arm? Take their dominant hand and put it in a sling for a day. Wrap up the whole arm - hand and all. Let them experience the problems that arise when trying to go through the day with a broken arm.
Obviously they're not going to experience the pain - but the inconvenience is sometimes just the 'pain' that's needed to understand what can happen, and that their parent is 'totally serious' about this.
Beyond that, I'd probably build something to simulate the view from a school bus, and let my kid be the driver while another kid walked in front of the simulated bus. Can you see the other kid Johnny? No. OK, how do you know he's there or not when you hit the gas? If you run him over, he could be killed or injured like we demonstrated...
Kids don't have the context of a driver to draw from, so it's up to us to give them some safe context to make the connection with...
Emily Stone
2:59 pm on Monday, August 20, 2012
Thanks for your thoughts, David. Has anyone tried building a bus simulator? I bet it would be a fun project, with a good lesson at the end.
Craig Apelbaum
5:12 pm on Monday, August 20, 2012
Parents should tell their children, only go on their school bus only Not another bus.
And only to school. And only go back back home from school. No place else.
mij
3:48 pm on Friday, August 24, 2012
State should mandate "SEAT BELTS" on school buses. No if ands or buts
somebody
10:52 pm on Sunday, October 28, 2012
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