During her afternoon route in Charlotte, North Carolina, school bus driver Lindora Richardson smelled something burning, then saw smoke. She pulled over and calmly escorted her six remaining passengers out the back door. The 13-year-old bus then erupted in flames. “I’m no hero,” Ms. Richardson said. “I was just doing my job.”
Approximately 400,000 yellow school buses serve American elementary and high school students. About 22.5 million school-age children ride yellow school buses to and from school. After-school activities provide an estimated 5 million additional daily student rides. (The American Public Transit Association estimates that public transportation provides another 900 million student rides per year.) School transportation is the single largest system of public transportation in the United States, resulting in over 94.2 billion total pupil-passenger miles per year. (This according to elementary school principal, Henry J. Srednicki, Ph.D,)
