A boy with special needs who functions at the level of a three-to-five year old was dropped off at the wrong address by a Calgary school bus Monday and left to stand there by himself. The boy's parents found him an hour later.
This is only the latest in a long parade of similar incidents. In fact, it is surprisingly difficult to find a specific incident by searching the internet, due to the fact that there are such a large number of similar incidents. Three separate cases in January, 2011, alone were found in a few seconds of searching.
Most of the incidents involve the children being left in the school bus.
A comment on one article indicated that the person's acquaintance was a bus driver in NY State and had been arrested and charged after a similar incident. In most cases the bus companies seem to get by with a "sorry" and the drivers are often let go.
In another incident this January, a boy in the Windsor area was left strapped on a wheelchair for 2-1/2 hours in an unheated bus.
Obviously, school boards have a variety of procedures in place in attempts to prevent these situations. However, just by scanning the incidents, it seems that these procedures are invariably labour intensive and create openings for human error to creep in, resulting in these traumatic incidents.
One of the solutions available is a buzzer that goes on automatically when the key is taken out of the ignition on the bus. The driver then has to walk to the back of the bus to turn off the buzzer before leaving the bus.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't help for the cases of kids being dropped off at the wrong place.