MEMPHIS, Tenn. — School let out for winter break Friday, and the company in charge of transporting Shelby County Schools students has stayed, for the most part, out of the news. WREG sorted through Durham records to examine how safe the buses have been.
After weeks of asking, WREG obtained records from Durham with the same information the company must send to SCS.
They show that between August and the end of November, Durham reported 90 incidents.
The data shows 43 of them were preventable.
“That seems high,” one parent said.
The information Durham sent WREG tracks incidents, not specifically accidents.
Plus, Durham said it changed the way it reports incidents this year.
Comparing numbers between this school year and last school year is like comparing apples to oranges, but through the first week of November last year, there were about 42 accidents.
There were other problems too, such as one driver getting arrested for drugs and drivers with criminal records.
“It’s real hard out there trying to stay on the road and maintain the children, so that’s a lot you’ve got to deal with,” said former bus driver Tiffany Coleman.
Coleman was a bus driver for six years. Now, she is a mother trusting drivers with her fourth grader’s safety.
Durham said in a statement, “This year we have implemented changes which have enhanced our recruitment efforts and driver safety. This includes opening our new SMART Center (Safety, Maintenance, Administration, Recruiting and Training) located on Covington Pike. Our recruitment activities have been very successful with our driver staffing percentage well above 100%. The new Center also has a state-of-the-art school bus simulator to enhance the training of our drivers so that we are providing safer service to the students in Shelby County. As for the way we currently report accidents, it does not compare with the data we provided last year as this year we rolled out a new way to report accidents to SCS and have provided you those counts by month.”
Durham said it was pleased with school start-up but it is never complacent when it comes to safety.
