2024 National School Bus Illegal Passing Survey
While school buses remain incredibly safe, we all know that students are most vulnerable when they are outside the bus in the “danger zone.” The Oregon Department of Education is assisting the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) in coordinating a national survey to document illegal passing of school buses. The data will help improve safety countermeasures at the state and national level.
We are requesting your assistance in this important project. Here’s how you can help:
On Tuesday, May 21st, please have your district’s school bus operators observe and report any instances of motorists illegally passing their school buses, using the linked “Illegal Passing Driver Survey.” Even drivers who have no “pass-bys” on the day of the survey should turn in the form so that we can get accurate data on how many pass-bys occur per day per bus.
Please instruct drivers to pay particular attention to the instructions and safety precautions listed on the form. As always, their primary duty is to the safety of their students. Please have your drivers pay particular attention to the bottom of the form where they are instructed to “report only illegal passes that occur while the bus driver is stopped with red warning lights flashing and stop arm(s) deployed in full compliance with our state training and procedures.”
Afterwards, record your district’s results on the linked “Illegal Passing Summary Tool” spreadsheet and email the document as an attachment to buslicense@ode.oregon.gov no later than Friday, May 31st. Since this document contains no personally identifiable information (PII), there is no need to send using secure file transfer.
Do not send your district report directly to NASDPTS. Our state has chosen to submit one report from the state agency (ODE), so please submit your results to our office only. We will compile the data for NASDPTS and share our statewide results with you all at the conclusion of the survey.
This data will be assembled into a report to document the problem of illegal passing across the country. The survey is vital to our follow-up to improve the safety of students in school bus loading zones.
Thank you for your help with this important initiative!
If you would like more information regarding this nationwide activity, visit the
NASDPTS website; you may also contact buslicense@ode.oregon.gov with any questions. Thank you for assisting us in creating safer legislation for students across America.