By K C Pawling, Road Safety and Loss Prevention Specialist
Well, if you’re a parent you may be recovering from the back-to-school push to get everything in place needed for your child’s return to the classroom. While some of you could be recovering from that, others could have a new stress, the stress of your child becoming a new driver.
County road departments may be receiving calls from concerned parents of a new student driver, making you aware of everything that can be perceived as a hazard to their newly permitted student driver. While these calls are not generally fun in nature, they can be great reminders of what you as a department should be doing moving into the new season, whether it is a new school season or the season of fall.
Along with the new drivers, school buses are back out on the roads. Bus drivers may be learning all new routes for the year, and they may not be familiar with the areas they are assigned to operate the school buses. So, the following are a few things we can do in county road departments to make sure our drivers, new or seasoned, can travel safely to and from school.
- Have a short safety meeting in the road department to remind employees to operate their equipment with a greater focus on safety relating to school drivers. Remind them to use the advance warning signs when blading or doing any work on the county roads.
- Contact the school districts in your county and get maps of all the school bus routes that have been established for this year. They may or may not be the same as they were last year. Just don’t assume they are.
- Drive those bus routes checking them for sign deficiencies. Make sure all the road signs are in good condition and installed correctly. Take note and CORRECT any sign that is obstructed by trees, shrubbery OR installed incorrectly.
- When you identify and remove any shrubbery, be sure to adequately spray it to prevent regrowth. Fall is a great time to spray the shrubbery while it is preparing to go dormant for the winter season.
- Double check child pickup locations for whether they need school bus stop-ahead signs. Are there any hills or other obstructions blocking the visibility of the location? Remember line of sight height is 3.5 feet from the road surface.
- Have conversations with the bus drivers themselves. This is not only good public relations, but it also develops a relationship so they may be willing to communicate any dangerous conditions they find with the road department.
- If you find any corn growing in the county road right-of-way, contact the landowner and notify them to remove it immediately. Make sure you take the opportunity to have a conversation with the farmer responsible for planting in the right-of-way. Help them understand that this is a practice that is not only a potential liability for the county, but for them also. If the landowner does not follow through, remove the corn and talk to your county attorney about collecting the costs.
- Finally, with the new bus routes in hand, adjust your snow removal routes as needed. Contact your local postmaster and identify any changes in postal routes too. As most of us know, the mail and bus routes are a priority for snow removal routes.
The new school season can be very exciting for the kids new to driving and stressful for the parents of those children. Let’s do our part as a road department to keep them as safe as possible while they are experiencing life.
And while YOU are experiencing life, if there is anything I can help you with, do not hesitate to contact me. I can be reached at 402-310-4417 or [email protected].
