CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Students and drivers will be getting enhanced training on school bus safety with the newest addition to Kanawha County’s fleet in the form of the Kanawha County Schools Safety Bus.
“We developed this through a series of conversations and meetings and decided this would be good for our drivers and our students and to share information with the public,” said Brette Fraley, executive director of transportation for Kanawha County Schools.
On Thursday, the bus was demonstrated at the Elkview Bus Terminal.
It’s equipped with seven video monitors providing instructions to drivers and students; an outside camera that lets drivers show students what they see when they step on the bus or are around the bus; an exterior sensor system dictating “danger zones” where drivers cannot see students; a smoke machine to simulate a bus fire and seat harnesses.
Every action on the bus is recorded for additional instruction.
“This is the first time it’s ever been used and, as far as I know, there’s not (another) one in the state of West Virginia,” Fraley said.
During Thursday’s demonstration, the bus was evacuated, with participants exiting through the rear door, as smoke filled the space.
Jimmy Lacy, transportation supervisor of safety and training for Kanawha County Schools, found a child doll hidden under one of the seats during the clearing. “That’s what a kid’s going to do. A kid’s going to hide. They’re going to get scared and they’re going to hunker down and they’re going to hide,” he said.
“They would have been screaming,” Peggy Stone, supervisor of transportation for the Elkview Bus Terminal, said of the likely reactions from students, especially younger ones, after Thursday’s exercise. Practice on the Kanawha County Safety Bus, she said, could change that.
Already, students do two school bus drills each year.
Rod Stapler, a Kanawha County school bus driver since 2009, said student safety must always be the priority for drivers — on or off the safety bus.
“You have to watch them all day long. You’re driving a lot out of your back mirror. You’re looking back making sure they’re staying in their seats, they’re not up and running up and down the bus,” Stapler said.
“Whenever they’re getting off the bus, you want to make sure that they pay attention to you crossing the road. That’s where we have so much trouble.”
A recent spot check on one day in April found 90 drivers in Kanawha County ran stop signs on school buses.
Currently, each school bus in Kanawha County is equipped with cameras that can capture images of vehicles that fail to stop, as required by law. The Kanawha County School System will soon put one bus on the road with facial recognition cameras as part of a pilot program.
As for the Kanawha County Schools Safety Bus, lessons learned on it may be rolled out to other parts of West Virginia. “It is a training tool,” Fraley said.