Teen drivers overtaking school bus

It should surprise no one to learn that the safest way for youngsters to get to and from school each day is aboard a lumbering yellow bus. Nor should anyone be surprised to find out that the most dangerous way to get to school is by riding there in a car with a teen-ager behind the wheel.

When transportation engineers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked into the safety factors of school commuting, they found that buses account for one-quarter of all the trips children make to school, but only 2 percent of the deaths in school-related traffic accidents. Teen-age drivers, on the other hand, account for 14 percent of trips to school and a staggering 55 percent of all traffic deaths en route. Each year, in fact, about 800 children are killed in motor vehicle accidents while commuting to school.

Faced with alarming numbers like those – along with statistics showing that auto accidents, overall, are the biggest killer of young people ages 15 to 20 in this country – it would seem only logical that parents who worry about their children’s safety would do everything in their power to ensure that their high schoolers leave the daily commute in the capable hands of responsible adult bus drivers. The only problem with that sensible plan, however, is that by the time your typical teen-ager approaches driving age, the yellow bus he might have boarded since grade school is suddenly regarded as just about the uncoolest vehicle on wheels. As most self-respecting high school juniors would tell you, the school bus is nothing less than a rolling romper room packed with young nerds, who, for some inexplicable reason, lack all the sophistication the juniors possessed in abundance at a similar age. To suggest to your teen that she should pass up a ride in a friend’s car and take the bus instead is, if her look of disgust is any indication, like suggesting that flip-flops and shorts are actually not appropriate school attire when there’s still snow on the ground.

“Without a doubt, a bus is the safest transportation to school,” said Randy Rudge, president of Northeast Auto and Cycle School, which his father ran for 40 years before him. “But the students call it the ‘loser cruiser.’ On the first day of class here, I talk all about the risks of driving at a young age, and I hit them hard with all the horrible statistics. Then, when I ask why they would take such risks, one of the most common answers is to avoid having to ride the bus anymore. There are more students driving to school than ever before, which may also be for the convenience of the parents. For kids, the car has now become a way of life.”

As evidence of the growing car culture among teens, Rudge tells about visiting a longtime guidance counselor at Hermon High School a few years ago. When Rudge asked him to name the biggest change in student life he’d witnessed over the decades, the counselor walked to a window overlooking the school parking lot and pointed to the sea of student-owned vehicles.

“When he started, only a handful of kids drove to school,” Rudge recalled. “Now, school parking lots everywhere are overflowing with cars, most of them driven by people with very little experience.”

If anyone doubts whether there really are more teen drivers on the roads than in generations past, and that they’re dying in record numbers as a result, Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky has the numbers to prove it’s true.

“There has indeed been a significant increase in the number of fatalities on the road,” Gwadosky told me two years ago while explaining his push for tougher Maine driver’s license laws. “That’s not just a perception; that’s reality. It’s not that the roads are necessarily less safe than they were years ago, but that there are so many more people driving at an early age.”

And, as the teeming high school parking lots would suggest, they are turning their backs sooner than ever on the safe but stodgy

yellow school buses in favor of the far riskier alternative.

“With so many more student drivers, greater education and parental involvement is more important than ever,” Rudge said. “We are seeing a change from the attitudes of the past, and the new driving laws have definitely helped. Even back in 1995, we’d have a class of 30 student drivers and only one parent might show up for parent night. Now they have to come, and that gives us a chance to remind them of the small amount of time they have to stress safe driving with their kids. Of course, it would be much safer if all students went to school on the bus, but we know that is not going to happen. So we have to focus instead on making them better drivers.”

Tom Weber’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.