Dear Mr Editor,
Today I am writing to you about the totally unsafe conditions of Tauranga’s school buses and how they put the bus drivers and the children they carry at risk every day. Only yesterday a full school bus crashed into a fuel truck after the truck pulled out in front of the driver after the light had been red for over 45 seconds! Sending two kids to the hospital and the driver in critical, potentially having internal damage!
The roads are unsafe for all buses, they are at risk from fool drivers as I said above. Now if that was the only issue I would not be writing towards you. Going back to before, if all the kids were sitting down on the bus that crashed, only the driver would have been hurt, but that is not the case. School buses are overcrowded, and bus companies like BayBus and UzaBus are being forced to cram as many kids as they can into their buses because the Tauranga City Council does not want to spend more of its budget on school buses, I am disappointed in them because this is causing overcrowding and kids being forced to stand up, making the bus an unsafe environment for not only those standing up but also sitting down. This is because when buses have to stop fast or get involved in a crash those standing up are going to get flug and fall on the floor, getting hurt themselves and potentially hurting others in the seats.
I have reached out to you because as a student myself, I am fearful while standing on a school bus, multiple times while standing I have been sent flying or flung forward when our bus has had to stop quickly from a quick changing traffic light or a fool driver thinking there are no repercussions to running a red light. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that bad judgment or driver errors cause most traffic accidents everywhere around the world, the 2021 road death rate from human error is 0.71% vehicle injury per 10,000 cars, which means that 7.1 people get injured on our roads per 1,000 cars.
I suggest that we ask or pressure the Tauranga City Council into paying for more buses on overcrowded routes, making everyone on the bus safer. Because if we don’t we're going to have quite a few more stories like the truck driver I have told you about.
Yours sincerely,
Bailey Witheford,