Scholars and educators yesterday urged the government to create new rules to crack down on badly trained kindergarten bus drivers and their bosses before a horrific accident happens.
The Ching-chuan Children's Security Foundation, a non-governmental organization, released the results of a survey with respect to the conditions of kindergarten school buses around the nation yesterday.
The group says the results show that school bus drivers and teacher escorts lack professionalism and buses are often badly maintained.
"There is an awakening sense among parents and teachers of the need for a uniform code for bus safety," said Hsieh Bang-chang (
"The government needs to establish new rules for school-bus management and then force kindergartens to follow them."
According to the survey, about 30 percent of kindergarten owners refused to answer the question,
"How many years have your school buses been in use?"
In addition, 60 percent of owners claimed to have no idea what the condition of their buses were.
A majority of bus drivers -- 60 percent -- have not attended a single session of emergency medical training and over 40 percent have no idea how to use a fire extinguisher or open the emergency doors on the buses they drive.
"The government has tried to regulate school buses under the Traffic Law, but we need to do more," said Wu Hsiang-ping (吳湘平), a researcher with the Automotive Research and Testing Center. "We should push the government to set up a licensing system to control the quality of bus drivers and teacher escorts."
Responding to the results, Lu Bon-fu (
"We will publish guidelines to help school teachers and bus drivers understand school bus safety better," Lu said. "We will also establish a national database of all school buses and drivers for better management."
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