School Travel Manager has been beavering away developing our software to make your child’s experience of going to school on the bus as safe and as pleasurable as possible.
However, there are certain safety tips that you can impart to your children to ensure their safety when they are going to school and back on the school bus. In this blog we will offer great ideas both for you and your kids to ensure their safety.
School Buses
School buses are the safest way for your kids to travel to school. This is for a number of reasons, the biggest is that everybody on the road is aware of school buses and to take care around them.
But it is still a fact that young students can get injured on the school bus, either getting on and off or whilst traveling on it.
Top Safety Tips
The following are some great tips for the safety of your kids:
- Make sure you accompany your kids to the school bus stop, walk with them and stay there till the bus comes along. Look at the driver and make sure he can actually see you child.
- Make sure your children are standing a good distance away from the kerb, at least three steps back. Then make the kids board one at a time in an orderly fashion.
- Make sure your kids know to wait for the bus to come to a complete stop before they try and board. The driver should know not to open the doors until the vehicle is stationary but it is much better to be safe than sorry.
- There are times when your child has to cross the road after alighting the bus, if your child does need to do this then advise that he or she takes three or four big strides in front of the bus. Whilst doing this ensure that the driver is watching them and wait till the driver signals that it is safe to cross. Remember the old instruction to cross the road, look left, right and then left again before attempting to cross the road.
- For smaller and younger children make sure they use the handrails when getting on or off the bus. Make sure your child has no straps from their bag that could get caught up in the door of the bus. Also that shoes are properly done up and tied.
- If your kids drops or mislays anything, then they should immediately inform the driver before doing anything. And that the driver watches the whole time whilst your child retrieves their possession.
- While you are at the bus stop look around for other kids who may need your help.
- If you are driving your children to the school bus stop then ensure you slow down near the stop or if you are passing any schools on the way. If you see any hazard lights on the bus then it is preparing either to stop or set off. Red lights mean that students are either getting on the bus or alighting.
If you want to know more what School Travel Manager can do for the safety of your children then contact us and speak to one of our knowledgeable advisors.