On any given day of the school year, thousands

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1 TRANSPORTATION SAFETY EXCHANGE Powered by CSS, Inc. Expect a Higher Standard Do your Bus Operators Put your Students at Risk? Transportation Safety Exchange (TSX) is a comprehensive, all-inclusive ground transportation safety rating and monitoring program that simplifies the passenger motor carrier selection process for school districts participating in the program. While TSX significantly reduces the challenges associated with managing transportation service needs, more importantly, it answers the question: Just how safe is the carrier that is transporting our children? On any given day of the school year, thousands of children, teachers, coaches, and parents ride chartered motor coaches to and from schoolrelated events, like field trips and sporting matches. Despite that fact that school districts own or contract a fleet of busses, these vehicles are intended to be used for short trips to and from school and not extended highway travel. This leaves districts few options other than chartering motor coaches for school related trips. As Philip J. McGaughey, Jr., Director of the Division of Procurement for Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools put it: the struggle with the yellow school bus and we have about 1,300 buses operating from five depots is they are going all the time. In the middle of the day, they often cannot accommodate a specific school s needs. NY Bus Accident: Poughkeepsie Students Injured in Semi-Truck, Charter Bus Crash 06/09/2011 WPB, FL Nicole Howley Poughkeepsie, NY A bus accident in Westchester County injured five third-grade students who were on a field trip with Krieger Elementary School Wednesday afternoon, June 8, Texas Students Injured in Charter Bus, 18-Wheer Crash in Mobile, Ala 06/06/2011 WPB, FL Injury Lawyers News Nicole Howley Mobile, AL A two-vehicle accident involving an 18-wheeler and a charter bus injured 26 band students, who were on their way to Orlando on a trip organized by parents. The bus accident occurred on Interstate 10 at around 12:34 a.m., at the 7-mile marker in the Grand Bay area, reported AL.com. School districts a across the country are major users of motor coach services, but unless a school district has access to the TSX Motor Carrier Network of approved companies, the safety record of those motor coach companies likely never enters into the selections process. At the same time, courts are increasingly holding the organizers of school-related travel liable for fatal or injury-causing events caused by the operator. Bluffton University s experience illuminates the threat to schools: The Ohio Supreme Court recently upheld Bluffton s liability for a crash involving a motor coach carrying its baseball team. But beyond liability issued, the safety of children is at risk. While it s likely that those making selection are not using objective safety ratings, it is even more likely that a surprising portion of those motor coaches would not be considered safe to transport US service members, yet routinely carry school children. How it this possible? 1

2 Charter Bus Carrying Mill Creek (GA) HS Chorus Students Overturns 04/10/2011 MYFOXATLANTA STAFF PINEHURST, Ga. - A charter bus carrying members of the chorus at Mill Creek High School overturned while traveling back from a trip to Florida. The Challenges of Selecting a Safer Motor Coach Company School districts face the same challenges common to other passenger trip organizers (PTOs): a lack of centralized reporting of the safety rating of motor coach operators. The US Department of Transportation recognizes this lack in its publication of the Uniform Guidelines for State Highway Safety Program, Guideline No. 17, Pupil Transportation Safety, calls on the states to establish a comprehensive pupil transportation safety program to ensure that school buses and school-chartered buses are operated and maintained so as to achieve the highest possible level of safety. A laudable goal, certainly, but one flawed by its dependence on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration s (FMCSA) regulation and reporting on motor coach operators: Every person who drives a school bus or school-chartered bus occupied by school children should, as a minimum... [b]e qualified as a driver under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations... school-chartered buses subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations... should be inspected and maintained in accordance with those regulations. School administrators, teachers, and parents might assume that because a motor carrier is registered with DOT, it has a good safety record. Recent history has shown again and again often with tragic results that FMCSA regulation and oversight of motor coaches is not enough. A tiny percentage of motor coach companies are inspected in a given year. According to FMCSA statistics, state and federal personnel conducted an average of close to 16,000 compliance reviews per year between 2008 and With more than 700,000 FMCSA registrants, only a portion of which are motor coach companies in operation in the United States, FMCSA s efforts barely scratch the surface of the issue. Fundamentally, FMCSA procedures are reactive, not proactive. The procedures are designed to identify the unsafe or bad carriers and force them into compliance rather than properly identifying the good carriers. Its programs and systems are designed to manage and focus their limited resources for enforcement, not to serve as a consumer-focused ranking system. Donna students seriously injured in field trip bus accident 05/06/2011 ISAAC GARCIA/Valley Morning Star DONNA Six people, including several Salinas Elementary students, were seriously injured Friday night when a charter bus returning to Donna from a field trip to Corpus Christi veered off the road following a tire blowout, according to information from police and school officials. Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Johnny Hernandez said 43 children and eight adults were aboard the bus at the time. Hanover Man Dies in Charter Bus Accident in Maryland, Students From St. Patrick School In Carlisle Suffer Minor Injures 09/29/2010 AP Staff reporter Bethesda, Maryland (AP) Federal investigators will try to find out what caused a bus carrying several children and their parents who spent the day sightseeing in the nation s capital to plunge off a highway, killing the driver and injuring more than a dozen. Developed at a School District s Request Consider this. In 1990, the US Department of Defense (DoD) instituted its own motor coach safety compliance program, administered by Consolidated Safety Services (CSS) because it relies heavily on motor coaches to safely transport service members. Each year, more than two million military personnel are transported over 200 million miles using their approved carriers. During CSS s tenure administering the program, there has been just one fatality. What does this have to do with transporting school children? Everything: We have seen passenger motor carriers disqualified from transporting hardened military troops by DoD because they can t comply with regulations, said Robert A. Watkins, Vice President of the CSS Transportation Safety and Security Division, and then show up on the list of carriers approved by some of the local school jurisdictions to transport our school children. There s just something wrong with that. 2

3 ...Continued Unlike DoD, which could administer their program for all the services nationwide from a single point of control, there are over 14,000 separate school districts nationwide who manage their programs independently. In 2004, a representative of one of those districts, Giles R. Benson, Director of the Department of Materials Management for the Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools, was asked whether he was assured of the safety of the motor carriers he used, and realized that he could not answer that question with confidence. Benson learned of the DoD program from one of the district s motor carriers and thought schools should have a program like the one. Benson approached CSS, which identified four carriers on the list that the county was then using that were not approved to transport military personnel for DoD but those carriers were considered qualified to transport school children. Thus was born the Pupil Transportation Safety Program, TSX s K-12 focused predecessor program. Founded by the certain key employees of CSS in 2011, TSX expands the scope, reach and benefits of the student transportation safety program, while decreasing the cost of participation for schools. TSX provides school districts unlimited access to a network of approved passenger motor carriers who can with the highest degree of probability provide safe and reliable transportation services. Moreover, schools are able to recommend specific carriers for inclusion in the TSX Motor Carrier Network. Because TSX ratings are available via web-based subscription rather than a static list, districts can broaden the number of authorized users to include PTAs, sports booster clubs or any other party that might arrange student trips. Elementary School Students Injured in Charter Bus Collision Three charter buses, carrying students from a Rockingham County Elementary School, were involved in a collision with an SUV on Interstate 66. Fire and rescue crews transported 37 passengers with minor injuries. 05/23/2009 Police Investigate Cause of Deadly Bus Crash Carrying High School Band PUBLISHED 10/12/2009 AP BOISE, Idaho State Police say they are piecing together information to understand just how a bus carrying a Utah high school band veered off a southeastern Idaho interstate, killing a 33-year-old band teacher and injuring dozens of student musicians who hours earlier had swept a competition. There have been a rash of accidents recently one close to Washington DC that really hit home. We have to know we can trust carriers to get our student from one place to another. Participation with TSX assures us the buses we were using for our student were safe and reliable, which is another important consideration, said McGaughey. Students have only a limited amount of time on these field trips, and prior to joining the program. we had unreliable carriers-who were not timely in terms of getting to and from field trip sites. Good carrier service is another benefit of our participation. Virginia State Police say three charter buses and an SUV have collided in the westbound lanes of Interstate 66. 3

4 TSX Approval We have an obligation to apply the highest standards in the ground transportation industry: TSX Approval, said Robert Watkins, Senior Vice President Transportation Safety and Security for CSS. The process is designed, to identify carriers with a culture of safety throughout their operations as opposed to those who are compliant by accident. Our rating system looks for management controls, foster a culture of safety, in addition to regulatory compliance, we monitor carriers continually. The TSX Approval process is composed of Pre-Qualification Screening: a full and comprehensive investigation into the carrier s operational history, including verification of on-road performance data, operating authority, classification, insurance information, size, commodities transported, power units and drivers. Motor carriers are further screened to determine their knowledge and understanding of the regulatory requirements governing their operation. On-Site Investigation and Evaluation: Motor carriers who meet and/or pass Pre-Qualification Screening must then demonstrate the ability to meet TSX standards. This is accomplished by conducting an on-site, comprehensive investigation that covers all operational processes, training, and management oversight that affects safety. Motor carriers receive a comprehensive report of the findings/violations and descriptions of operational deficiencies, if any. Just as important, the TSX-CR report also includes recommendations for the appropriate corrective action. Ongoing Interim Performance Monitoring: All TSX Approved motor carriers are subject to performance evaluations every month. Performance data includes accidents, vehicle out-of-service, and established driver out-of-service data that is publicly available. TSX continually monitors carrier data in order to know when a particular carrier s earlier compliance standards are not being maintained. In the event that a carrier s performance falls below the acceptable standards, it is removed from the program. Staying listed in the the TSX Motor Carrier Network provides significant motivation for carrier to stay vigilant with regard to maintaining safety standards. Under FMCSA oversight alone, if a carrier is cited for a regulatory problem, they will pay a fine and continue to operate. If we remove a carrier from our TSX Approved list, there are immediate effects, said Watkins. The schools stop using them, which gets their attention quickly, so problems tend to be addressed very quickly. Bus Firm In Crash Often Used By School Districts / How public agencies choose charter services gets closer look MATT STILES, CHASE DAVIS Staff Wed 08/20/2008 Houston Chronicle, Section A, Page 1, 3 STAR R.O. Edition Angel Tours, the charter bus company tied to a deadly North Texas crash this month, also shuttled children and students on dozens of trips since 2006, mostly for extracurricular events paid by local schools and universities, records obtained by the Houston Chronicle show. 4

5 Spotlight on Student Transportation Safety: Howard County, Maryland Howard County, Maryland is keenly aware of the importance of safety in transporting its pupils and staff. Instead of owning and maintaining its own fleet of yellow busses, Howard County contracts with private companies for home-to-school transportation. However, this does not mean the Howard County leaves safety to its home-to-school operators. We closely monitor every aspect of transportation, said David Ramsay Director of the Howard County Public School Systems Pupil Transportation Office. All of the drivers attend our training and go through our screening. We do the background checks, local and federal levels, as well as drug and alcohol testing. As it relates to the actual vehicles, we hold three safety inspections each year. All of the busses are brought in to our facilities for complete inspection. It is all very closely monitored by us. But when it comes to chartering motor coaches, Ramsay does not have that level of control. Instead, he turns to TSX. We entrust TSX to do for private motor coaches what we do for home-to-school transportation. Charter bus carrying students from Bryan Elementary crashes 03/28/2008 The Birmingham News A charter bus taking students from Bryan Elementary School in Morris on a field trip to Chattanooga crashed about 7:30 a.m. today on Interstate 59 in St. Clair County. Several students were injured, and one was rescued after being trapped in the wreckage. We have many, many field trips within Maryland and across several states. TSX gives us peace of mind that when we call to arrange a bus, the reviewed companies meet tough standards, above and beyond the minimum. Through TSX, we have a high degree of confidence that we are entrusting our students to good, safe, high quality operators, said Ramsay. As with most schools, the choice of motor coach operators is made at the building-level in Howard Country. There are potentially hundreds of individuals making a carrier selection, but with TSX, each building has access to our approved list. So, for example, if one of our football teams needs to go to Virginia, the coach might make the selection of carrier. We have every confidence that when a school needs the service, the providers have met the highest possible standards, said Ramsay. In the grand scheme, it is very inexpensive peace of mind relative to our budget of more than $35 million, the cost is negligible-- a tiny fraction of a single percent. Compared to the cost of potential liability in the event of an accident, membership in the TSX program is invaluable. We have 200 schools and 145,000 students. On a per capita basis, the cost of the program was negligible: it s a bargain... the reports remarkable thorough. They look at drivers records, drug tests, rest records, how well buses are maintained, the quality of replacement parts, whether they use ASE certified mechanics... As a procurement professional, I was surprised by TSX s rigor. Philip J. McGaughey, Jr., Director of the Division of Procurement for Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools 2012 Transportation Safety Exchange, Inc. Powered by CSS, Inc. For more information call or visit us online at 5