From Brad Mellor, the Ann Arbor Public Schools Transportation Director
“American students are nearly eight times safer riding in a school bus than with their own parents and guardians in cars.
The fatality rate for school buses is only 0.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) compared to 1.5 fatalities per 100 million VMT for cars”
Unequaled safety record.
There is no safer way to transport a child than in a school bus. Fatal crashes involving school bus occupants are extremely rare events, even though school buses serve daily in every community—a remarkable 8.8 billion student "to-and-from school" trips annually. Every school day, some 450,000 yellow school buses transport more than 24 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. Said another way to give perspective to the huge magnitude of pupil transportation, the equivalent of the populations of Florida, Massachusetts and Oregon ride on a school bus twice every day—almost always without a serious incident.
Trust the school bus for the best safety for your child
The Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that every year more than 800 school-aged children are killed as occupants in other motor vehicles or as pedestrians or bicyclists during “normal school transport hours.” Most of these deaths could be prevented if children rode in school buses. Parents need to know that driving a child to school—or allowing them to ride to school with other teenagers--is not a safety smart decision—hands down, the school bus is the safest way to and from school. Even worse, allowing a child to drive themselves to school, or riding with other teenagers to school, increases the risk of fatality by 10 percent.
Occupant Fatalities
Last year, 5 children were killed as passengers in school buses (one each in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas and Texas). 45 states did not have a single child killed as a school bus passenger—an incredibly good national safety record. Between 1990 and 2000, an average of just six children each year died as school bus passengers. These tragedies typically involved unavoidable, severe circumstances.
Pedestrian fatalities
Last year, 26 children were killed as pedestrians getting on or off a school bus, or while waiting at the school bus stop. Other motorists illegally passing a stopped school bus remain a problem in every community and the school bus industry urges strict police and judicial enforcement against violators. Over the past 10 years, an average of 29 children were killed in school bus-related pedestrian accidents - struck while getting on or off a school bus
School buses are the largest mass transit program in the U.S.
School buses provide approximately 10 billion student trips per year ---8.8 billion "to-and-from school" trips and an estim
