Chattanooga crash exposes gaps in school bus safety
Warning lights were flashing in the days before the horrific crash of a school bus in Chattanooga, Tenn., last month.
Hamilton County education officials had received complaints from a parent, children, a school behavior specialist and the Woodmore Elementary School principal accusing the driver variously of speeding, cursing at children, telling them he didn’t care about them and, on one trip, “swerving and purposely trying to cause them to fall.” On Nov. 16, a note from a student arrived: The driver goes so fast it feels “like the bus is going to flip over.”
Five days later, the driver ran off a narrow, winding road — not part of his regular route — and slammed into a tree. Six children died as a result. The 24-year-old driver, Johnthony Walker, has been charged with six counts of vehicular homicide.
As for the adults responsible for the children’s safety? They’re pointing fingers. The Hamilton County Department of Education says it passed “along complaints and concerns” to Durham School Services, the Illinois company that provides bus service to districts in Tennessee and 31 other states.
Durham got some but not all of the complaints, and after investigating, said CEO David A. Duke, saw no reason to terminate Walker. Duke added that the county department could have demanded Walker’s removal from his routes. An education department spokesman disagreed. “We pay Durham to make those decisions,” she wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
The courts and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will sort through conflicting claims to determine what happened. But this much is certain: While adults wrangled over who had authority, warning signs went unaddressed, and children’s lives were lost.
Tragedies in Chattanooga and elsewhere reveal gaps in how school bus drivers are screened and how complaints are handled. Fatal school bus crashes are quite rare, but when they’ve occurred in recent years, drivers have often been the problem, according to NTSB investigations.
The NTSB said Wednesday that in another collision last month, when a Baltimore school bus crashed into a city bus, killing six adults, the school bus driver had a history of seizures and had been involved in at least 12 crashes in the past five years.
The system for regulating drivers and buses is splintered, making it easier for problems to be missed. One federal agency writes the rules. Another, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, inspects buses and drivers from companies with interstate contracts, such as Durham. Buses owned by school districts, about 65% of the system, fall under state control. Accidents are investigated by state or local police, who aren’t required to report to the federal agency that scores companies on safety and driver fitness.
While Durham, for example, has a “satisfactory” overall rating from the safety administration, it had a driver fitness rating worse than more than 90% of its peers that had been inspected 500 times.
Children’s safety demands a more coordinated approach and less shirking of responsibility.