State leaders are expected to announce their plans to make school buses safer for children later today.
News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson is in Greene County previewing what you can expect from today’s announcement LIVE on News Center 7′s Daybreak.
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Governor Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Public Safety will share the Ohio School Bus Safety Task Force’s recommendations later today.
News Center 7 previously reported that the task force was formed after an 11-year-old boy was killed in a crash involving a school bus in Clark County last August.
The announcement is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. this afternoon in Columbus.
We will have a full recap later today on News Center 7 at 5 p.m.
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Robertson said that the task force and state leaders shared a common goal. The goal was to make sure that when kids got on the bus, they made it to school safely.
In the task force’s first five meetings, they looked at requiring seat belts, installing crash warning systems, and making buses brighter in the dark.
They also investigated how police, firefighters, and medics responded to school bus crashes and how children involved in those crashes are reunited with their families.
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News Center 7 found that the task force has reviewed crash data that shows wrecks involving school buses represent 0.4 percent of all crashes in the state over the last 5 ½ years.
“The accidents that we look at here in Ohio are typically the passenger cars going left of center, t-boning our buses, and other things,” Carolyn Everidge-Frey with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce said at the September 25 meeting.
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News Center 7 previously reported that a Greenville City School district bus mechanic is also on the task force. The I-Team’s lead investigative reporter, John Bedell, spoke with him back in November.
Rob Widener has worked on school buses for decades and said that the task force has kept an open mind about whether the state should change its seat belt requirements.
“We’ve had both presentations for and against (requiring seat belts on school busses) and nobody’s really said anything to the other for or against yet,” Widener told the I-Team. “And we’ve not sat down to make all of our final recommendations just yet.”
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Governor DeWine will share what recommendations the task force came up with later this afternoon.
The I-Team will continue following the group’s work and bring you updates as we get them.
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