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In-Service Safety Series
In-Service Safety Series
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Time: 50 minutes

Description: The driver must be completely familiar with the route he or she drives. The driver must know what to do with hazards on that route.

Hazards are defined as those things that pose a threat to school bus safety. For example, not all route intersections are hazards but intersections that have limited sight or high crash occurrence are route hazards. At the completion of this module, participants will be able to:

  1. Identify the potential driving hazards on their own regular routes
  2. Describe what they can do to eliminate, avoid, or deal with those hazards
  3. Explain what to do for field or activity trips when the route is not familiar.

#1 Field/Activity Trip Checklist

Could be presented with:
Vehicle Training
Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety
Loading and Unloading

What the Pupil Transportation Supervisor Can Do

  • For regular routes:
    - Have written routes for all drivers that mark hazards and explain how to deal with them.
    - Drivers need to know the traffic patterns to expect during their route. These patterns can be thrown off by street/road closings. Get that information from city or county traffic engineers and tell affected drivers about scheduled closings. Make the phone number available to drivers so they can call to check on road closings.
    - Have trained substitute drivers for regular routes.
  • For field/activity trips:
    - Take videos of frequent field trips to the same location for drivers to borrow and review.
    - Have written directions on file for most field trips.
    - If at all possible, pay drivers to practice driving the route in a car prior to having to drive it in the bus. NOTE: If your state requires that any time spent practicing is compensable, you may need to clearly define and monitor what is approved practice time.
  • Require drivers to report hazards on their routes. Make it easy for them by using a route hazard report form (see sample on page 17).

What to Include on a Route Sheet

  1. The bus number
  2. The driver's name
  3. The name of the school
  4. Where the bus is parked (if appropriate)
  5. The route number
  6. The time the route begins and the time the route ends
  7. The total number of students riding the bus
  8. For each pick-up/drop-off:
    - The time it should occur
    - The specific location
    - The number of students expected
  9. For the period between pick-ups/drop-offs:
    - The length in miles and minutes
    - Possible hazards and how to deal with them
  10. For a highway-rail grade crossing:
    - When it will occur on the route
    - The specific location
    - The DOT number assigned to the grade crossing
    (some won't have one)

Additional Resources

  1. Many larger school districts have written procedures for establishing routes and route sheets, both regular runs and activity/field trips. Contact your state agency responsible for pupil transportation, state pupil transportation associations, or a national pupil transportation association listed under General Resources for samples.

Route Hazard: Anything that could pose a threat to the safety of the school bus or put its passengers in jeopardy.

Directions: Report all route hazards. Describe the route hazard as completely as you can. Be specific about the location of the route hazard.

Example: a low hanging branch on Jackson St. headed west 1/10 of a mile after the intersection of Route 124 and Jackson St.

Return this completed report to your route supervisor.

Person Reporting:

Route Number:

Bus Number:

Location of Hazard:

Description of Hazard:

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