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School
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School Bus Facts

Key National Statistics

School Bus-Related
Child Fatalities

School Bus-Related
Fatalities

Key Safety
Equipment Required
on School Buses

School Bus Experts

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Unequaled safety record. There is no safer
way to transport a child than in a school bus. Fatal crashes involving
occupants are extremely rare events, even though school buses serve
daily in every community - a remarkable 8.8 billion student
trips annually. Every school day, some 440,000 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.
- Safety Statistics. Last year, 45 states had not a single child
killed as a school bus occupant - an incredible 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.
- 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 passengers
in other motor vehicles, or walking or riding bicycles, during "normal
school transportation hours." Most of these deaths could be prevented
if children rode in school buses. Parents need to know that driving
a child to school 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.
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Pedestrian fatalities. 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.
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School buses are the largest mass transit program
in the U.S. School buses provide approximately 8.8 billion student
trips per year. In contrast, transit buses provide only about 5.2
billion unlinked passenger trips each year in the U.S. (i.e. getting
to a destination by using a single bus instead of multiple connections).
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