No uptick this year in bus crash figures

WASILLA — An influx of new, locally inexperienced drivers has not resulted in more bus collisions than usual so far this school year, according to school district officials.

So far, authorities have recorded 22 collisions this school year, according to figures provided by Luke Fulp, who is the Mat-Su Borough School District’s assistant superintendent for business services. The number is largely in keeping with collisions numbers going back to 2011.

The data is kept by fiscal year, meaning the most recent figures, for Fiscal Year 16, began July 1 and end on June 30. Figures provided to the district by bussing contractor First Student show November was the most collision-prone month so far, with seven accidents.

Those figures largely mirror figures from previous years. For example, First Student drivers reported 22 accidents by the end of November in each of the last three fiscal years. Early figures also aren’t predictive of the school year’s total number. For example, Fiscal Year 2013 — when collisions for the entire year spiked to 56 — the number of collisions reported by the end of November was just 18. The year before, when collision figures totaled 49 for the entire year (the second-highest tally for the last six fiscal years), the district had counted only 14 collisions by the end of November.

Drivers averaged about 42 collisions per fiscal year between the 2011 and 2015, according to district figures, and none have been fatal for drivers or students. Most of the collisions this year have been minor. A single school bus driver has been reported injured so far this year, and no children have been reported as injured. That’s on par for all years except Fiscal Year 2014, when six students were injured in November 2013.

Fulp said reporting for school bus collisions is more sensitive than average wreck reporting. For example, on Aug. 24, 2012, a school bus touched a light pole at low speed in a parking lot. No students were injured, and damage to the bus was exceedingly light.

“This was a rub, not a tail-swing,” Fulp said.

However, because it involved a school bus and the other object was inanimate, the collision was reported as a driver-at-fault collision, Fulp said. That collision falls within Fiscal Year 2013, meaning it is counted among the unusually high number of collisions that year.

“We’re not excusing them by any means, but we are tracking the reporting on them,” he said. “They are — for the most part — minor accidents. It (this year’s figure) hasn’t been a departure from what we’ve seen in other prior year collisions.”

The lone fatality in those six years occurred in November 2011 in Talkeetna, when Richard Pride, Jr. drove his minivan into the back of a school bus operated by Bunker & Bunker, a Willow-based school bus contractor. The bus had stopped to drop off a student. Pride died from his injuries, according to news accounts published at the time. Authorities ruled the school bus driver not at fault in that collision according to district figures. A student standing to get off the bus received minor injuries.

Fulp said district officials have largely addressed the most pressing transportation safety issue this year — route consolidation — after a serious driver shortage resulted in late arrivals for some buses. For example, some buses arrived as much as half an hour later than their scheduled times, Fulp said. The shortage matches those faced by other Alaska districts, including the Fairbanks North Star Borough school system. That’s due in part to increased driving demands for the tourism industry, Fulp said.

The school district’s contract also mandates that 60 percent of First Student’s workforce have prior year experience, Fulp said.

“They can’t just fill all their bus drivers with brand new drivers,” he said.

Training requirements for bus drivers involve 20 hours of classroom instruction, 20 hours of behind-the-wheel driving, and a three-hour driving test, Fulp said. In addition to the introductory training, drivers undergo period trainings on particular subjects, like managing students and how to deal with irate drivers. And First Student is contractually obligated to report statistics on collisions to the school system, so officials can monitor and evaluate safety concerns.

The driver shortage has largely been resolved. The last bus route to go without a regular full-time driver was Bus Route 55, which serves Butte Elementary and the surrounding community, Fulp said. In that case, one of 19 drivers brought up from Washington as a replacement driver decided to stay on permanently about two weeks ago, according to Butte Elementary principal Dan Kitchin.

“Our transportation department does an amazing job,” he said. “They really do. We live in an area where the climate is constantly changing.”

Calls to the local First Student office seeking comment were directed to the company’s Cincinnati, Ohio public relations office, which did not return several calls for comment.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.