9004 - Safe and Alert Bus Driver

Safe and Alert Utah School Bus Drivers Policy and Procedures

Utah State Office of Education (USOE) in partnership with the Utah Association of Pupil Transportation (UAPT)

Best Practices for Safe and Alert Utah School Bus Drivers

The Utah State Office of Education (USOE) in partnership with the Utah Association for Pupil Transportation (UAPT) offers some best practice solutions to help districts accommodate the Hours of Service rules in their field/activity trip planning;

  • For trips that obviously put the driver into an over-hours situation, the district may require that the group stay overnight.
  • Use “Trip Driver Only” drivers who will not have driven earlier in the day and won’t be driving the next morning.
  • Use two drivers. (They will still both be considered on duty, but as long as the trip is not over 15 hours, both drivers can be utilized to drive). Caution must be taken on the return time so both drivers get 8 hours rest after the trip before being required to be back on-duty the next day.
  • If a route driver takes a trip that lasts into the late evening and they work close to 15 hours that day, use another driver for their morning run.
  • Utilize a driver from another district en-route. For example;

                  Driver 1 begins at 5am

                  At 10am driver 2 takes over from another district. (Driver 2 began his day                                     at 7am with 3 hours on his morning route)

                  Driver 1 is off duty

                  Driver 2 heads to destination, arriving in 2 hours, then departs from                                               activity at 4pm to arrive at exchange point at 6pm.

                  Driver 1 finishes trip at 11pm.

The total trip lasted 18 hours with Driver 1 accumulating 10 hours of drive time.      

(5am-10am. – 6pm-11pm) Driver 1 also had 8 hours of off duty time. (10am-6pm)

Driver 2 had a total on duty time of 12 hours with 7 hours of drive time.

(7am-6pm on duty) (7am-12:00 and 4pm-6pm driving)

State best practices:

PCSD Bus drivers will drive buses not faster that 70 MPH on any given activity or trip.

(Teacher Coaches)/(Teacher Advisors) are not to drive buses, due to time on duty concerns and student supervision concerns that may arise with the potential of double duty.

The following pages show examples of use of log sheets to determine if driving or on-duty times are within acceptable amounts to prevent the possibility of fatigue.

 
   
       
     
 
   

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Piute County School District
500 North Main - P.O. Box 69
Junction, Utah 84740-0069
Phone: (435)-577-2912 - Fax: (435)-577-2561
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