Tail Swing & Sideswipe Training is Important for Schools

Tail Swing and Sideswipe Training for School Bus Safety

After looking at school bus safety data from five different school districts, we discovered that each school’s transportation department had an average of 25 minor accidents a year. These accidents were typically related to tail swing or sideswipe issues.

While most of these accidents involved minor damage to mailboxes or stop signs, each cost around $1,000 to fix. These were also preventable accidents, meaning the damage never should have occurred in the first place.

Why Spend Thousands of Dollars on Preventable Accidents?

A quick calculation will show you these schools are spending an average of $25,000 per year to cover damages because school bus safety policies and procedures are not being followed. Yes, these districts are throwing away $25,000 a year on driver complacency.

Either the drivers are forgetting their safety training, not receiving proper training, or just not keeping safety as a focus. While these are minor accidents, the numbers can quickly increase in more serious accidents.

Cost Increase for Personal Injury Accidents

Studies show one in six school bus crashes involve personal injury. If you don’t know how this will affect the costs, you may want to ask your school’s attorney how quickly the litigation costs can increase if an accident involves another person.

It only takes one tail swing or sideswipe accident involving a pedestrian or a person injured in another vehicle to place your district in a personal injury legal nightmare. The cost for paying out in one of these cases can get into the $100,000 or more range.

Training Reduces Accidents

When you train a teenager to drive, you train with them on the skills they need repeatedly. You spend time going over things like backing, increasing follow distance, lane changes, proper speeds, etc. A school bus driver requires the same ongoing training.

To maintain school bus safety, drivers should be continuously training on defensive driving skills. They need continuous bus safety training. How much emphasis a school district places on training is directly related to their costs like potential claims and insurance premiums.

If a district has a high frequency of accidents and is not training to increase awareness and prevent them from happening, they will have higher insurance premiums. This is because the frequency and severity of their accident will continue to grow.

The Training Tools You Need to Maintain Bus Driver Safety

Infinit-I Workforce Solutions is a leader in the transportation training industry. We have several training titles geared towards school bus safety in our training catalogs, and we are always adding new videos to help with training on topics like avoiding tail swing and side swipe accidents.

Not only that, but if you notice any other trends in bad driver behavior, the system makes it easy for you to react to it immediately, train on the issue, and maintain proof you’ve held your school bus drivers accountable. For more information on the school transportation training provided through Infinit-I, request our catalog for schools.