Lilly Sway

Today I would like to bring the most disturbing thing that I have observed in the past few months to your attention. I have been working from home lately and for the most part it is great. The cost of doing so is that you are easily accessible to anyone and all of their emergencies. People don’t feel qualms calling someone that is home all day and that doesn’t really work. It can be a very annoying assumption that makes me angry. But sometimes you are set in the right place at the right time for good reason. As I carried on with my usual run of the mill day, back and forth to the local post office, the school runs and so on I’ve had the misfortune of running across the neighborhood buses and their drivers on a day to day basis. I was used to taking the larger, more accessible road to leave my neighborhood after dropping my children off to their different schools. I used to only pass by a bus already parked at the schools or on the four-lane highway. I was shocked at the indifference that some of the drivers so candidly display to the rules of the road. I’m not a person who can tolerate the endangerment of one child, much less the 40 or so children that are on each bus everyday. I must let you know (from experience) that the constant barrage of children can be nerve-racking everyday. However, the saying is: “if the kitchen is to hot for you, then get out”. I became more and more aware as the month turned into two. Most of the bus drivers that I observed never stopped at a stop sign and these supposed tested and trained drivers did not even use their equipment properly, like when they are about to unload children at a stop they are supposed to warn you by flashing their lights the color red, and releasing the stop sign and they unload while an arm extends from the front of the bus to insure the crossing children’s safety while in full view. I guess these particular drivers just thought they had to pass their test, and not practice what they had learned at bus driving school. I have to say that you may think that I’m just nit picking at a couple of common mistakes, but I have stayed silent on this subject for two months and have just tried to ignore the ongoing disregard not just of road rules but of children’s safety. In all of good consciousness I could not take it for granted that you think that your children are in safe hands when they mount that big yellow bus. I grant you that all bus drivers are not in the habit of jeopardizing your children, but if you think that the bus is a safe haven, while you go off to work, well then you must live in a world of denial. What would I have you do? Well, that is entirely up to you, but I have completed my obligation and I realize that there are bus drivers who take their job seriously so I only reported the one bus driver that constantly had a phone in her ear while she drove past the stop signs and went barreling through the neighborhood like a bully with no end in sight. If she had been struck by another car she surely would have screamed foul and she would have gotten away with her accident. Most people who entrust their children to these drivers would rather think that an individual who drives alone must have been in a hurry and be responsible for an accident that children were hurt in. I saw this lady run stop sign after stop sign and honk at other cars if she thought they were trying to cross before her. I was further upset by the fact that she used her horn frequently when caught behind a car that stopped at a stop sign. I overheard the same bus driver telling another bus driver that she almost did not make it on time because a dummy actually stopped at a stop when there were no cars to stop for, when her friend said “girl you better watch out for people who may have seen you, they’ll call it in on you, like they did me”. She just laughed and said “Yeah, let ‘em call. Nobody wants my job, nobody wants brats in their car. That’s why I have this job. No one else is going to do it, so just let them call, I don’t care”. I called the bus barn and had a condescending manager tell me that one cannot just call the bus barn and say that bus # so and so on a particular route did a bad thing because he said and I quote “I assure you, that all of our bus drivers are trained to drive defensively and cautiously and if there is a complaint you will have to come out to the bus barn and fill out the proper forms.” Yes, the proper forms. I had to chew on that one. I did encounter the drivers on a day to day basis and I thought that maybe it was a fluke and that they were just getting used to the route. No, that was not going to satisfy me, surely other people have to have seen this type of driving. I began to ask the moms in the car-rider line and everyone I talked to had seen or experienced the same bad driving. When I asked if they complained the answer was the same “that’s why I do the car rider line”. They all seemed to know how the bus drivers were abusing the road but not one of those people would go and report it. I reported it and stated that the reason was the driver with the phone in her hand while driving and I finally did go and fill out the forms but now the thing has turned into as the manager said “a big mess”. I’m really sorry that there are so many things wrong with this big yellow program, but when will someone stand up and say “Hey! This is wrong”. Why is it so hard to do right by our children? Taking it for granted that someone else is going to care for them as you would is not right. I‘m one of the parents who sits in the car-rider line and goes through traffic everyday to receive my children. I manage to sacrifice so many comforts along the way: like sleeping in, having “me time” but I have learned what is really important. I realize that most of us have to work, but our schools are already overcrowded, the system has so many requirements that our teachers are pushed to the brink and they have the most important job to do. They have to insure the prosperity of our society as a whole by giving our children the knowledge to succeed. After parents entrust children for 7 hours to be enlightened and help them to understand what is required of them in life, why would we just let some crazy bus driver snatch all of that beauty and eagerness away from us? They have an obligation to keep our children out of harms way. I refuse to just stand and watch. I feel compelled to try to wake you up. I was asked by the bus barn manager which route it was that my children wait for their bus on, and what bus they regularly get on. When I said that they were car riders, he said how was it that the bus driver’s actions affected me on a day to day basis. For those of you who don’t get it, I don’t use the school district bus service. I said to him that I just happen to think that all children should be safe, and that should be important to everyone whether you ride the big yellow or not.

Food for the Mind

Lilly’s Way

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