Alvin M. Keeling 
Last week, residents of Chennai mourned the death of an eight-year-old student who died in an accident involving a school bus.
The boy was reportedly knocked down as the bus driver tried to reverse and failed to notice the child standing behind the bus.
The child’s distraught parents had said that if there had been an attendant or helper on the bus, such a tragedy could have been avoided.
The accident is not the first example of children in Tamil Nadu losing their lives due to the negligence of school bus drivers or administrators.
In 2016, a nine-year-old boy in Vaniyambadi lost his life after falling under the wheels of a school bus. The child allegedly slipped off the running board while attempting to board the bus, and the driver who was unaware of the incident accelerated.
Again, the private school and its officials had ignored security mandates that require the presence of an attendant on school buses.
Even earlier, in 2012, a six-year-old student at Mudichur fell through the floor of a collapsed school bus and died after being hit by the same vehicle. And passing the buck seems to be the norm for the parties involved in any case, as no one dares to take responsibility for their actions.
The school management washed their hands of the incident and instead blamed the private contractors. Transport authorities in turn said the bus was registered in the name of the school.
The Supreme Court had issued safety guidelines for school buses in 1997, following a horrific accident in Wazirabad, New Delhi. A school bus plunged off a bridge into the Yamuna River, killing 27 school children.
Parents lamented a lack of action even after such loss of life. As of 2019, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways reported that as many as 11,000 children died in road accidents in the country, an increase of 11.94% from the previous year.
Uttar Pradesh accounted for the bulk of the cases with 2,388 deaths, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1,153 and Punjab with 979 deaths.
Beyond the blame game, we need to address the deep rot that lies at the heart of our school transportation system and urban planning.
Although the schools boast of being centrally located, there may or may not be room for a vehicle to be safely parked, whether on or off campus. Children are often asked to get off the bus, just by the side of the main road, bustling with high-speed traffic.
There are also schools that only impose admission on students who live a certain distance from the schools, to ensure their safety, which is a tired solution.
With the exception of top-tier schools, few jurisdictions bother to carry out periodic condition checks on the vehicles in their care.
In addition to the quality of the vehicles, it is essential to confirm that the buses are driven and maintained by able-bodied people, whose licenses, background checks and driving records are impeccable. How many pilots would pass such tests is anyone’s guess. In the aforementioned recent incident, the driver was believed to be a 60-year-old man.
Last week, school officials were ordered by the Department of School Education to prevent students from riding two-wheelers into schools. But there is so much more to do in this space that requires both government intervention in terms of policy changes and parental support in terms of reporting broken standards.
