We're living in an age of nonstop technological progress and innovation in all areas of life, and that includes student bus transportation. New school bus technologies are arriving every year, and while not all will become widely adopted, each offers new opportunities for districts to improve student safety or energy efficiency, or simply cut costs.

Is your district starting to think about alternative school bus fuels? They’re becoming more common, and an increasing number of major bus manufacturers are pushing their alt-fuel designs. Plus, states such as Texas are now beginning to offer rebates and other incentives for buses that move away from diesel and towards other options.

It’s generally agreed that loading and unloading are the most dangerous times for a child riding a school bus. In fact, the loading and unloading area is even occasionally referred to “the danger zone” because of how many problems could potentially occur. The students are beyond the driver’s direct control and exposed to traffic and other hazards.

 When it comes to drawing up bus routes, most districts try to do it at the beginning of the school year and stick with it. Sometimes that’s just not possible, and circumstances beyond their control dictate that routes may have to be re-planned during the school year. This brings up a big problem – how to inform parents of school bus route changes and ensure every child still gets on the right bus home.

 The topic of school bus fuels and the environmental harm done by bus fleets is being treated with increasing concern. With the majority of school buses on the road still being powered by diesel engines, they’re responsible for a lot of pollution. Many districts would like to explore alternative school bus fuels, but the expenses involved can be daunting.

Without a doubt, one of the biggest threats to the safety of students riding school buses is other drivers. Illegal school bus passing is a huge problem nationwide. Ongoing studies in recent years have suggested that it happens tens of thousands of times every day and each school-bus passing has the possibility of causing accidents or injuries.

 One morning in 2015 a nonverbal, autistic high school student named Paul Lee was left behind on his Whittier, CA, school bus. Eight hours later, in temperatures approaching 100 degrees, he was dead – not discovered until it was time for the bus’s afternoon route. It was a genuine tragedy, one which highlighted how important it was to always guarantee no students were forgotten on school buses.

The RE Series school buses from IC Bus are already a popular solution for student bus transportation, but they’re about to get significantly better. IC Bus has just announced their newest Type D buses, already going into general production, and they offer some substantial improvements over previous IC offerings. In particular, we’re impressed by the range of safety features being integrated into these buses.

So let’s take a look at what might be your district’s next vehicle investment!

 When drivers endanger school bus riders thousands of times every day by ignoring stop-arm signals, it’s clearly a problem that needs solving. But how?

One of the more common solutions being adopted is the use of stop-arm cameras, which work in roughly the same fashion as traffic light cameras. The camera attempts to capture the license plate of anyone speeding by a stopped bus, and the resulting stop-arm fines are mailed to the offending driver’s address on record.

The current school bus driver shortage shows no signs of abating. In fact, if more states follow Tennessee's lead and start imposing stricter requirements on school bus drivers, that could actually make the recruitment-and-retention problem worse. It's a difficult situation with no easy answers since, of course, no district wants to hire unqualified drivers... but sometimes it's hard to find any drivers at all.