Increasing the Speed of Road Transportation without Sacrificing Safety

« Back to Home

Safe School Travel

Posted on

If you're like a lot of people, your best memories of school involve school travel. From comical anecdotes about walking miles through the snow to a country schoolroom, to contemporary tales of gossiping with friends - both face to face and online - while riding the bus to school, memories of school travel form a significant part of everyone's childhood.

If you have children, you may be looking towards them travelling independently to school, and uppermost in most parents' minds is finding a safe and reliable transportation service that you can trust.

The care of your child is as important during that journey to and from school as it is at school itself, and parents find it comforting to know that school bus travel is the safest of all means of transport to school. Incredibly, a study run by Sydney University's Institute of Transport Studies found that school travel by bus is:

  • 31 times safer than walking;

  • 228 times more safe than cycling; and even,

  • Even 7 times safer than travelling in the family vehicle!

How do bus and train operators ensure the safety of your child? Today's transport companies go to great lengths to make sure that school travel is safe. Here's how:

  • Assigning the most experienced drivers to school routes;

  • Training all drivers in contingencies associated with school runs;

  • Maintaining vehicles to ensure they are mechanically sound;

  • Facilitating training programs aimed at educating students about safer school travel.

Parents and carers can also contribute to the safety of their children when travelling to and from school. You can do this by taking special care to implement safe behaviours directly before and after school travel, which is the critical time when most accidents occur. The best way to do this is to:

  • Accompany your child to the bus stop in the morning and afternoon;

  • Create a plan with your child, so that they are prepared should they ever miss their stop or get onto the wrong bus.

If you're unable to travel to the bus stop yourself, you can still create a safer school travel environment by ensuring your child:

  • Waits for the bus to leave before crossing the road;

  • Chooses a safe place to make road crossings;

  • Waits until there is no traffic before crossing;

  • Looks both ways, then walks calmly across the road.

Literally millions of children travel to school each day by bus, train or tram and parents and transport operators alike are committed to ensuring your young ones arrive safe, sound and with a smile on their faces. Understanding the procedures that transport operators implement to keep your child safe en route to school, and the ways you can help, should put a smile on your face too!


Share