The Relative Risks of School Travel A National Perspective and Guidance for Local Community Risk Assessment -- Special Report 269 (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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When children are killed or injured in crashes involving school buses, the link to school transportation appears obvious; when children are killed or injured in crashes that occur when they are traveling to or from school or school-related activities by other modes, however, the purpose of the trip is often not known or recorded, and the risks are not coded in a school-related category. Despite such limitations and the fact that estimates of the risks across school travel modes are confounded by inconsistent and incomplete data, sufficient information is available to make gross comparisons of the relative risks among modes used for school travel and to provide guidance for risk management.
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In response to this mandate, this report provides estimates of the relative risk among school travel modes using available information collected at the national level. Because data on trip purpose are not included in the available datasets for all modes, the data analyzed represent deaths and injuries that occurred during normal school travel hours as defined earlier.
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For some travel mode/crash categories, the uncertainty can be large because of rare events and sampling biases. 4The term passenger vehicles is used here to refer to motor vehicles excluding school buses and other buses.
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To enable comparisons among the modes, one standard definition had to be used; time of day was the variable determined to be most useful for this purpose. Because all modes except school buses may be used for both school and nonschool travel during normal school travel hours as defined earlier, and data in the analyses are for a total of 205 days (which includes 20 to 25 weekday holidays and other weekday nonschool days during the typical school year)
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Conversely, the other three modal classifications (passenger vehicles with teen drivers, bicycling, and walking) have estimated injury rates and fatality counts disproportionately greater than expected on the basis of exposure data.
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On a per-trip basis and across the four age groupings, travel risks during nonschool travel hours are approximately twice what they are during normal school travel hours. On a TABLE ES-3 Estimated Student Injury and Fatality Rates by Mode During Normal School Travel Hours Injuries Fatalities Per 100 Per 100 Per 100 Per 100 Million Million Million Million Student Student- Student StudentMode Trips Miles Trips Miles School bus 100 20 0.3 0.1 Other bus 120 20 0.1 <0.1 Passenger vehicle, adult driver 490 90 1.6 0.3 Passenger vehicle, teen driver 2,300 430 13.2 2.4 Bicycle 1,610 2,050 9.6 12.2 Walking 310 590 4.6 8.7 Overall rate 650 130 3.5 0.7 Source: 19911999 FARS and GES.
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Walking Other PV FIGURE ES-1 Student fatality rates per 100 million trips by mode during normal school travel hours with 90 percent confidence intervals (PV = passenger vehicle)
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Walking Other PV FIGURE ES-3 Student fatality rates per 100 million miles by mode during normal school travel hours with 90 percent confidence intervals (PV = passenger vehicle)
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This is not, however, the only way to manage the risks associated with school travel; measures designed to enhance the safety of particular modes -- e.g., changing school bus pick-up and drop-off locations, changing passenger vehicle pick-up and drop-off locations, enforcing bicycle helmet laws, and implementing and enforcing graduated driver licensing programs-can also be employed. To help inform the risk mitigation evaluation process, the committee has also created for each school travel mode safety checklists that delineate opportunities that have been shown to reduce risk or are accepted as best practice.
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Alternatively, providing additional after-school bus service or restricting off-campus trips during school hours could improve safety significantly. Risk estimates developed using the committee's risk management framework can also be helpful to local and state transportation agencies in making more informed decisions regarding the allocation of available funds for infrastructure improvements designed to reduce situations in which motor vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists conflict with one another.
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Recommendation 2: Using a systematic risk management frame work, school districts should identify the risk factors most salient for the modes of school travel used by children in their community and identify approaches that can be used to manage and reduce those risks, including shifts to safer modes and safety improvements within each mode. Each school district, and even schools within a district, will have different conditions and requirements that will affect school travel risks and the choices of officials and parents for reducing those risks.
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Yet obtaining more thorough and complete data is not without cost. Given the large number of fatalities and injuries that occur on highways in the United States and the relatively small proportion that involve students during normal school travel hours, the benefits of additional data collection efforts focused solely on school travel should be carefully considered before such efforts are recommended or implemented.
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Rather, cost-effective means of collecting new data using existing structures, both governmental and nongovernmental, should be explored and identified. The national school bus loading zone fatality survey conducted annually by the Kansas Department of Education, for example, is a volunteer data collection structure that has provided valuable information for more than 30 years at minimal cost.
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