Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s newest school buses debuting this fall will transport students with some high-tech safety features.
Eight large yellow buses, equipped with the newest safety features and technology, will join the district’s 131-bus fleet when school resumes in August for the 2019-2020 school year.
BCSC officials unveiled the new buses at a May 9 event at Columbus East High School where bus drivers demonstrated the vehicles’ advanced safety technology, including electronic stability control, collision avoidance and 360-degree cameras.
“It’s important to provide any and all safety features that we can for our drivers to enhance the safety of our students,” said Karen Wetherald, BCSC transportation manager. “I felt like this was an excellent product — something that I felt our drivers could benefit from as well as our students.”
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Wetherald requested permission from the school board to purchase the buses, each at a purchase price of $118,869, at the board’s April 8 meeting. The purchase price for a bus will vary depending on the type of bus and specifications requested.
Director of operations Brett Boezeman outlined the buses’ three major safety features, including cameras, a stability control system and 360-degree viewing inside the driver’s rear-view mirror.
A camera mounted to the hood of the bus monitors the distance between the bus and the vehicle ahead, Boezeman said. If a bus moves too close to the vehicle ahead, the bus will alert the driver with a vibration of the seat and an audio alarm and automatically decrease the bus’ speed.
This camera also reads speed limit signs and will alert the driver if he or she is exceeding the posted limit. It will also alert the driver if he or she changes lanes without signaling or veers off the road.
A stability control system eliminates the ability of the bus to possibly tip if, for example, the driver turns too quickly around a curb. The system activates the bus’ brakes and decreases its speed.
Also, four perimeter cameras are mounted on each side of the bus to monitor all four areas, including a bus’ blind spots and danger zones. A 360-degree camera view is integrated in the driver’s rear-view mirror, Boezeman said. One of the bus’ four perimeter cameras is also activated on the mirror when a signal is in use or the stop arm is deployed.
The new technology could be used to catch drivers violating the stop arm law, which requires motorists to stop when a school bus is picking up or dropping off children.
Wetherald said the corporation did not make its purchase based on the perspective of catching violators, but instead said they looked at it as an obligation to keep children and drivers safe from the moment they walk to the bus in the morning until the students are delivered to their homes in the afternoon.
Clifford Zehr, president of Kerlin Bus Sales and Leading, said BCSC is the first school corporation in Indiana to purchase this bus package, which is sold across the United States.
“We’ve been told this may be a standard feature down the road for every bus built because the most dangerous time of a school bus is the loading and unloading zone of students,” Zehr said. “That’s huge. Everybody — the factories, the schools — are all wanting to make their buses safer for the children they transport.”
Bus driver Doug Denny said the view is improved greatly by the 360-degree camera. As a rural driver, Denny said his biggest fear is dropping a tire off the shoulder of a road and tipping the bus onto its side.
“With the stability control, as you start to do that, this is going to automatically brake the right tires and level the bus out to give the driver a chance to get it back on the road,” Denny said. “On the narrow roads I drive on, that’s probably the biggest obstacle. These features are going to be a huge help.”
BCSC makes bus purchases annually and outlines an estimate of how many buses it plans to purchase based on the number of dollars available in its budget. Roberts said old buses are cycled out each year with new buses.
“When you look at the cost of these features and what we’re already spending on a bus, it’s kind of a no brainer,” Roberts said. “You can add these safety enhancements and get the kind of vision these drivers now have, 360 degrees around the bus, for really a few thousand dollars on top of a $100,000 bus purchase. It’s a pretty good opportunity for us.”
The buses will be implemented into routes beginning in the 2019-20 school year. They are not dedicated to specific routes at this time.
Drivers have already practiced driving the buses and undergone technical training. Wetherald said they’re encouraged to practice driving the new buses over summer break, too.
“If this is proven, as we think that it will be, a product that we think we’ll want to move forward with, then it’s going to be much like our seat belts — we’ll begin implementing them,” Wetherald said.
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Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s most recent bus purchases include new advanced safety technology: BusWise Electronic Stability Control, BusWise PV360 camera, BusWise Collision Avoidance and a backup camera on model year 2019 buses.
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To learn more about BCSC’s eight new buses, contact the district’s transportation office at 812-376-4246.
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BCSC bus fleet: 131
Number of students transported daily: 8,300
Number of miles driven daily: More than 4,000 miles
Number of buses with seat belts: 76
Number of new buses in 2019-20: 8
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