Give the Kids a Break

By Ted Vail

It’s not like we can’t be seen. A school bus is huge, yel­low and black, cov­ered with reflec­tors and flash­ing red and yel­low lights. It has its own stop sign and is dri­ven by a trained pro­fes­sional dri­ver who has been screened for crim­i­nal back grounds and phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions. All these pre­cau­tions, though, are no match for the stu­pid­ity and self­ish­ness of dri­vers chat­ting on their cell phones, run­ning past our stop signs as we unload or load children.

I am a dri­ver for the Mans­field City Schools. On aver­age every school day over 5,000 cars run through the stop sign of a school bus in the state of Ohio. 5,000 times peo­ple are throw­ing the dice while gam­bling the lives of chil­dren try­ing to get on or off a school bus.

On any given month I have two or three cars run my stop sign while chil­dren are in the street load­ing or off load­ing. I get the tag num­bers as best I can and report them to the police. Of 71 reported instances in Mans­field a few years back, where the dri­ver wrote down the tag num­ber as well as a descrip­tion of the dri­ver and loca­tion and time of the offence only one dri­ver was cited. When the police don’t take these vio­la­tions seri­ously where can we turn for help? I am turn­ing to you.

We have declared war on these kids through our behav­ior. If there are 30 buses that have the same prob­lem, then 90 times a month peo­ple are dri­ving their cars though these crowds of chil­dren in Mans­field alone. Can tragedy be far off?

Cell phone use has con­tributed wildly to the inat­ten­tion of dri­vers. I see folks chat­ting or tex­ting on the phone while rolling through my reds. It seems they just don’t care. As long as it is not their kid in dan­ger they see no prob­lem. Par­ents are very quick to point out every time a dri­ver makes a mis­take or, please say it ain’t so, we need to report bad behav­ior on the bus. When their lit­tle dar­lings come home with a write up remov­ing them from the bus it always seems to be the fault of the bus dri­vers. But this sit­u­a­tion rests solely on the oper­a­tors of the cars in the zone of a bus with its reds on.

They say that talk­ing on a cell phone is every bit as dan­ger­ous as dri­ving drunk. Dri­ving a school bus full of unruly kids is like dri­ving while talk­ing on 50 cell phones and watch­ing Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre in your rear view mir­ror at the same time. It is a thank­less, low pay­ing job with a tremen­dous amount of respon­si­bil­ity and almost no author­ity. There are large blind spots around the out­side of a bus that kids get lost in. We must have the traf­fic around us stopped to safely board our kids.

In Mans­field, due to bud­get cuts, our buses get washed three times a year. Win­dows get cov­ered in dirt and our vis­i­bil­ity is very restricted. We can’t see kids run­ning for the bus unless it is right out­side out front wind­shield. These bud­get cuts will cost this town one day a price that will break our hearts.

When you see the amber lights flash­ing, please slow down. When you see the red lights flash­ing and the stop sign flip out please stop. Noth­ing is so impor­tant that we need to rest one of these kids in a clean short cof­fin. The dice are being tossed and lives are at stake. We will bury a child if this continues.

For some this will be a gen­tle reminder you will take to heart. I thank you. I am call­ing on the rest you self absorbed, silly twits refus­ing to give your mouths, thumbs and the kids a brake to hang up your %#$@*&%$#@ cell phones and drive as if they were your chil­dren at risk! After all Ohio, they are! Please don’t par­don my French! Dri­ving a school bus you get quite good at it.

Teddy Vail is a school bus dri­ver in Mans­field and a poet. He has sev­eral CDs recorded. He also plays Santa Claus on the side. He is a very nice guy, strong as an ox and almost twice as smart.

Ted Vail Author of From My Nig­ger To My Brother: One man’s jour­ney out of racism. Sam­ple or pur­chase From My Nig­ger To My Brother: One man’s jour­ney out of racism: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25922, teddvail@yahoo.com

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