Speed-risk session for bus drivers to address tendency to speed after dropping children
Telegraph | 26 February 2025
An association that runs most of the school buses in the city has decided to hold a session for its members next month to address the tendency of a section of drivers to speed after dropping children at school.
While a set of buses operates only for schools, others have double permits and cater to office goers after dropping off children in the morning.
Owners of some of these buses admitted that a section of drivers tend to speed after dropping school children because of time crunch.
The time gap between dropping students and starting an office trip varies between 35 and 40 minutes, they added.
The association has decided that drivers of both the category of buses would be instructed to attend the session to be held in March where risks of speeding and the fallouts would be discussed in the presence of experts.
Discussions would be also held in the open on whether some of the errant bus drivers could be blacklisted.
“There is a category of buses that aren’t painted yellow and do multiple other trips apart from dropping children to schools. A section of drivers of these buses tend to speed when the vehicle is empty. This has to stop,” said Anurag Agarwal, general secretary of the West Bengal Contract Carriage Owners Association.
“We are waiting for the ongoing examinations in schools to get over before we hold a session with the drivers of all categories of buses whose owners are our members. This is necessary because the image of school buses is getting tarnished.”
A 77-year-old woman, Shanti Devi Singh, was mowed down by an empty school bus near Wellington Square on Monday morning when she was trying to cross the road on her way home near the Lenin Sarani-Nirmal Chunder Street crossing.
The bus had just dropped off children at a central Calcutta school and its rear wheels went over the woman, who had stepped out for a morning walk.
The bus driver, Murari Samanta, 53, a Muchipara resident, has been arrested.
Several members of the contract carriage owners’ association said close to 50 per cent of their 2,500 buses engaged in ferrying school children have double permits and operate for different companies ferrying their staff after dropping off school children.
These buses operate on their own, collecting students of a school from a particular part of the city, dropping them off and then doubling up as office shuttles.
Most of them run on monthly contracts with offices whose employees they ferry.
The owners said this was the only way to remain afloat.
Parents hiring these buses tend to pay way less — between ₹1,200 and ₹1,500, for each student — against close to ₹3,000 for the other category of school buses, they said. The gap is met through office shuttles, they added.
“A 50-seater bus costs between ₹32 lakh and ₹35 lakh. The EMI is around ₹75,000 per month. Add the insurance fees and taxes to this. Out of 50 students, the defaulter list extends to around 10. So what is the owner left with?” said Sukumar Paul, an owner of a bus that doubles for offices besides plying school children.