During our eight month “Reckless on Our Roads” exclusive investigation, we saw school buses and vans exceeding the speed limit, rolling through stoplights and stop signs, and making questionable lane changes.
One of our state’s largest school bus companies told us our piece has reinforced its mission to keep drivers aware of how safe they need to be.
New Britain-based Dattco is one of our state’s largest school bus companies, with about 950 drivers across Connecticut.
Vice President of School Bus Bryony Chamberlain said, “We're generally doing …75 hours of behind the wheel training for our drivers.”
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That’s well over the 40-hour minimum level of initial training required for bus drivers in the state. There’s also six hours of refresher training required each year by the state.
Like many of our state’s larger school bus companies, Dattco has kept close tabs on its drivers with GPS tracking and frequent retraining sessions.
Chamberlain told us she showed our story to some of its drivers as part of its retraining.
“I will admit, we use your story. It's good because it shows people what does happen out in the road," Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain said she believes Dattco school bus driver speeds have been kept in check by constant monitoring with GPS tracking systems that indicate when, where, for how long and how often its drivers go above the posted speed limit.
“We've talked to people every single day, showing them where they've made a mistake, where they're speeding too much. And it's that education that makes all the difference," Chamberlain said.
In Connecticut, school buses with passengers must adhere to a 50 mile per hour speed limit on highways.
During a recent interview with state police, Trooper Evan Goddard told NBC CT Investigates that when it comes to school buses and school vans, there’s no gray area with speeding.
“There's really no excuse for that kind of stuff," Goddard said.
Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Tony Guerrera caught our school bus story.
“I did watch it, good job by the way,” Guerrera said.
We asked him where he stood after seeing us catch school bus and van drivers rolling through stop lights, rolling through stop signs, even shooting the gap.
Guerrera responded, “I think in every bunch of apples, you may get one or two bad ones…we always want to make sure our school bus drivers are adequately trained, and I think they are.”
He told us the 40 hours minimum training is enough, noting what we have heard from state researchers - that despite the poor school bus and school van driving we found, there has been no appreciable increase in school bus crashes over the past decade in Connecticut.
Guerrera believes the state, school bus companies and the public need to leverage the technology we have to keep school bus drivers honest, sending in dash cam videos or just contacting law enforcement and the school bus companies when they see bad school bus driver behavior.
“I think the key here is awareness," Guerrera said.
The biggest action at the capitol right now may not involve school bus drivers, but the thousands of people who blow by school buses when kids are about to cross the street.
NBC Connecticut Investigates recently filed a story about the problems Bridgeport is facing in that regard, and it has gotten some attention from legislators.
