Mike Rosen at 850 KOA addressed an issue this week that’s got parents, school districts, bus drivers and state governments up in arms. The issue is school bus drivers talking on cell phones while driving children to and from school.
Last week an 850 KOA listener called in to the radio station tip line to say he noticed a Denver Public School bus weaving and signaling to turn left, yet he turned right. The listener followed the bus and discovered the driver was talking on his cell phone. (If you click on the link above, you can hear both sides of the story.)
In 1997, the American School Bus Council adopted a position to exceed the National Transportation Safety Board and urged a ban on school bus drivers talking on cell phones while driving, loading and unloading students. It appears that 14 states have also enacted legislation supporting the ban.
Rosen’s point was that we shouldn’t need government to get involved in such things, since any employer at any time can forbid certain activities which place employees, customers or others at risk. Employers do it all the time – and should!
I agree with him. We don’t ask the government to require data entry people to take a break from their keyboarding every every 30 minutes, or mandate that medical students get 7 hours sleep for every 12 hour shift they pull. Yet both these groups of people are at risk of making mistakes if they don’t take time to rest before going back to work.
But the bigger question is this…what’s taking the school bus companies and the school districts (the employers) so long to establish and enforce a standard of no cell phones while driving, loading or unloading the kids? Perhaps it’s already in force and drivers are just not following the rules, but I suspect this is a political hot potato especially in unionized environments.
There’s no doubt about it – cell phones are handy to have, especially in times of emergency. But NO driver should ever be talking on a cell phone while they are “on duty”. If call center reps can’t accept or make personal phone calls while on the job, why should school bus drivers be allowed to do so?
Oh, and one more thing…I’ve been privileged recently to do work for pupil transportation groups here in Colorado and find that most school bus drivers’ number one concern is student safety. In fact, at a recent teambuilder for Adams 12 Schools north of Denver, the in-service event included how to raise awareness of the importance of drivers stopping for the kids when the bus ”STOP” sign is extended.
As drivers, we all know (or should know) that when that sign pops out, you need to stop and wait until the driver pulls the sign back in. But plenty of people just whiz on by, more concerned with their schedule than the safety of our children.
But someone in the group mentioned this common sense law isn’t even part of the Colorado written driver’s license test. If it’s true, now that’s a government intervention I would expect should happen post-haste, especially given the influx of new residents within our communities.
Writing from 6711 ft. and expecting more snow!
Laura Benjamin, Interpersonal Communication Coach
