The agency responsible for student transportation is highlighting the importance of school bus safety and the dedicated bus drivers who transport thousands of students throughout Chatham-Kent and Sarnia-Lambton.
This is National School Bus Safety Week, with today marking School Bus Driver Appreciation Day.
Kent Orr, general manager of Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services says transporting hundreds of students to school and home again is a huge responsibility.
“It’s one thing to drive a 40-foot commercial vehicle, in traffic, in weather, and then to take care of the kids,” Orr says. “We do, across the district, thousands and thousands of kilometre every day. We’ve got about 13,000 bus stops we service every day in our district.”
The theme for this year’s Bus Driver Appreciation Day is “My driver, my safety hero.”
Orr says on any given day, there are roughly 18,350 kids being driven across 5500 square kilometres, with buses driving an average of 43,000 kilometers every day.
Credit is also due to those behind the scenes, providing maintenance, dispatch, trainers, and more who keep the buses running.
