Mum’s safety plea finally heard
For six months Ngaire Foreman has feared for the safety of her daughters after their rural school bus pick-up spot was moved near a blind hill on a 100km/h road.
The bus Ellah, 9, and Tayla, 7, take to Inglewood Primary School in Taranaki has been picking them up at the intersection of rural Hursthouse Rd and Little Lepper Rd, and then backing into Hursthouse Rd to turn around.
There have been a number of near misses with tankers, and Foreman has spent months contacting the Ministry of Education and Tranzit to get the bus stop moved back to its old spot further up Hursthouse Rd, where it could turn safely.
The situation had reached a point where Foreman and husband Shane were considering pulling their kids off the bus.
‘‘If something happened to our girls or the other children on the bus we would never forgive ourselves,’’ she said
But yesterday, when Stuff/The Taranaki Daily News went to visit Foreman to see her situation, the bus driver arrived and made an announcement.
They would now be picking up the girls at their Little Lepper Rd driveway, ‘‘starting today’’.
Foreman said she had not been informed of the new change, but was delighted that her sixmonth fight for safety had paid off.
‘‘We’re really, really grateful and thankful that they’ve seen sense and put the children’s safety first,’’ she said.
Foreman said the bus stop had been moved after children living near the old site left the school.
But its new location had seen a number of near misses.
She had spoken to tanker drivers who had been shaken up by close calls with the bus, but neither driver was at fault, she said yesterday.
‘‘We did some research and a standard truck in dry conditions needs at the very least 200m to stop safely.
‘‘We had another near miss yesterday.’’
Kim Shannon, head of education infrastructure service at the Ministry of Education, said in a statement they operate over
1500 daily bus routes with tens of thousands of bus stops, which are continually adjusted as families move in and out of communities.
‘‘Safety is our top priority when designing bus routes and the location of bus stops,’’ she said.
‘‘After hearing concerns about the safety of this bus stop’s location, we inspected it and have relocated the turnaround point.
‘‘Our formal instruction for the bus company to change its route was sent last week and came into effect today [December
5], allowing time for the school to communicate the change to families,’’ she said.