Parents please talk to kids about buses

I read the story about the bus driver who stopped short and injured several students. I drove a school bus for a number of years, so I can empathize with her frustration at student behavior. However, what she did was wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Intentionally endangering your kids is the worst thing a bus driver can do. Over and above the fact that you are being paid to keep those kids safe, you are in a position of public trust (and therefore public scrutiny) and what you do reflects not only on you but on every bus driver.

Having said this though, I would like to address a comment to the parents of the students who were injured. Your children are victims, true. But they are not innocent victims. The fact is, your children were injured because they were not in their seats. Again, this does not excuse the driver's action. But, as my mom always taught me, two wrongs do not make a right.

In the years I was driving I was forced to stop short on six occasions -- once due to a kid on a skateboard rolling out in front of me, once due to a deer running across the road, and four times due to other drivers who cut my bus off (mostly because they were on their cell phones while driving). None of my students were injured in any of those stops because they were all in their seats. School bus seats are like cocoons. As long as the children stay in those cocoons, they are safer than they are in your own family car. Don't take my word for it, check the Federal DOT statistics.

All the parents out there with children who ride school busses need to impress upon them the importance of sitting properly in their seats while on the bus.

Ed Emerson

East Dundee