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Inexpensive device would force bus drivers to walk to the back of their bus after dropping students off at school.

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Buzzer could save students from being abandoned on busses

The Northern Lights School Division is looking at installing special equipment on their busses after a four-year-old boy was left unattended for hours on a school bus and a local driver was suspended indefinitely last month.

School board chairman Walter Hrycauk said they have discussed using a system that requires drivers to walk to the back of their bus to turn off a buzzer at the end of their route – basically forcing drivers to do a walk-through and check for students who might still be on the bus. Hrycauk added that the board not only wants to have the technology in their fleet, but also wants them to be standard equipment on busses across the province.

“The board wants to be proactive on this issue and we think all school busses should be required to have these devices,” Hrycauk said. “It’s a precaution and a reminder for drivers that this is something they have to do every day they’re on the job.”

The Northern Lights board wrote a letter to Alberta Transportation to ask about the possibility of making the devices required on all Alberta school busses – like the white strobe lights the government mandated as required equipment in 2010.

Children forgotten ‘twice a week’

The division has been in contact with Child Check Mate, an Ontario company that manufactures the buzzer technology. The company’s president, Gordan Both, said their technology is on 200,000 busses across North America.

“I started this company because I have my own school bus company – and the same thing happened to me,” Both said, explaining that children get left behind on busses with disturbing frequency. “I have an Internet alert that tells me whenever a student is left on a bus and it happens at least twice a week. It’s astonishing how often it happens.”

He said the buzzer technology is legally required in at least three U.S. states and he predicts that they would someday be standard equipment in every province and state in the continent. The buzzer costs about $100, takes half an hour to install, and will last the lifetime of the bus, Both said.

“They’re fairly inexpensive and we’re selling tonnes of them,” he said. “Kids don’t get forgotten on busses because drivers aren’t conscious of what they’re doing – but they’re humans. Our system doesn’t make them look for kids, but it does everything to get them to walk to the back of the bus.”