Safety lessons

Anxiety would be a mild term to describe my feelings on those rare occasions when I am asked by my better half to pick up our five-year-old from the bus stop. If the bus is delayed by a few minutes, it invariably triggers palpitations and I end up calling the driver.

An assurance that he is only minutes away fails to calm my nerves. I relax only when I get a glimpse of the bright yellow Ashok Leyland 50-seater. This happens every single time I undertake the prosaic task.

On other days I have another important duty - giving safety tips to my little one. Before she says goodbye every morning, I extract a promise from her that she will not fall asleep on the bus. The fear of her being left behind gives me nightmares.

After a tragic incident in an Abu Dhabi school early this year, these safety lessons have become a habit. A Pakistani child who fell asleep while going to school was left behind on the bus by a careless driver. She was found dead later. The incident occurred because the school did not have a reporting system for students. Many months later, most schools still lack a mechanism to check if all kids who board the buses reach their classes.

But am I being paranoid? The answer, as it turns out, is that many people with school-going children share the same feelings.

Early this year, Dubai's transport watchdog RTA imposed sweeping changes in the school bus transport system: all buses were painted yellow, bright red STOP signs were installed and seat belts and fire safety gadgets made mandatory.

Thankfully, the new regulations were quickly implemented by most of Dubai's 190 schools plying over 2,200 buses that ferry around 100,000 students.

However, an investigation by XPRESS revealed that the overhaul of the school transport system remains largely cosmetic with safety parameters still shrouded in ambiguity (Pages 6-7).

While the RTA's move was undoubtedly aimed at improving the safety of children on school buses, the desired results can only be achieved when the regulations are enforced by the book and parents and the public in general are also involved. Most drivers ignore the STOP sign when children are disembarking or boarding the vehicle. A law declaring overtaking a school bus while the STOP sign is activated would be a step in the right direction.