Since 2012, more than 60 DeKalb County School District school bus drivers were cited multiple times each for misjudging the size of their school buses, sideswiping cars and backing into other buses among the most popular infractions.
DeKalb County drivers were responsible for about two bus accidents a day since 2012, according to data district officials submitted to the state.
According to DeKalb County School District's School Bus Operations guide, drivers can be recommended for termination after being cited for two accidents while driving the bus. The district employs more than 800 drivers for more than a thousand routes driven daily to deliver 60,000 students to and from school.
One driver who’s still employed by the district has been involved in 12 accidents in the last three years. Eight of those accidents were deemed preventable. Her most recent accident? Two weeks ago.
District spokeswoman Eileen Houston-Stewart said the district recently instituted monthly driving record checks for all employees who drive as part of their jobs.
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Until recently, DeKalb had been one of those districts that failed to deliver accurate accident data to the state. It did not report any crashes in 2014 and only two in 2015, but reported 206 crashes from July 21 through November of 2016, more than any school district in Georgia for the year even with abbreviated reporting.
The district learned of the yearly discrepancies from an inquiry by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and has since reported an additional 700 accidents to the state from 2014, 2015 and 2016.
“Since learning that the accidents were not reported in the last two years, we started pulling weekly reports of what is reported to the state,” district officials said in the statement. “A bus accident report is now produced once per week to verify that we are reporting accidents.”
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