After a West Virginia school bus crash two years ago that left children injured and a boy with an amputation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the problem was not limited to one driver. Police found the driver was drunk, but the NTSB then pointed to what it described as a broader pattern of impairment among school bus drivers.
On Thursday, the NTSB recommended for the first time that all new school buses be equipped with alcohol detection systems that can disable the bus if they detect the driver might be impaired. The agency said similar systems are already used on school buses in parts of Europe.
Kris Poland, deputy director of the NTSB’s Office of Highway Safety, said school bus drivers face a higher standard than other drivers. “There’s a higher expectation for school bus drivers than many other types of drivers,” Poland said, adding that the NTSB expects the drivers are attentive, not fatigued, and not impaired.
The NTSB did not estimate what adding the detection systems would cost or say who would pay for them. The Associated Press reported that ignition interlock devices used for people charged with driving under the influence typically cost about $75 to $150 to install and roughly $100 a month to monitor.
The agency said its recommendation focuses on alcohol rather than drugs, in part because investigators determined alcohol was the probable cause of the West Virginia crash and because the NTSB said it did not have similar testing availability for other drugs such as marijuana. The NTSB also said there are not clear legal standards for how much of other drugs is enough to impair a driver.
The NTSB’s recommendation ties to a larger concern about drunken driving. The agency said alcohol is linked to one-third of about 37,000 traffic deaths each year, and it said investigators had enough evidence to support the need for alcohol detection systems among school bus drivers despite challenges in nailing down exact statistics.
In the West Virginia case, investigators said the driver lost control of the bus after hitting a driveway culvert off the right side of a rural road, and the AP reported that all 19 children aboard were hurt, though most had only minor injuries. The driver was sentenced last year to up to 110 years in prison.
The NTSB’s supporting materials included a 2020 Stateline.org report that found at least 118 school bus drivers were ticketed or arrested over the previous five years on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, according to Meg Sweeny, the primary author of the NTSB report on the West Virginia crash.
Advocacy groups and attorneys said the idea of screening bus drivers would be consistent with the role of protecting children during daily transportation. Peter Kurdock, general counsel for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said children traveling to and from school are especially deserving of safeguards. “Children going to and from the schoolhouse are America’s most precious passengers,” Kurdock said. “So we should be doing all we can to make the bus as safe as possible.”
Kurdock predicted the NTSB recommendation would likely face pushback from school bus owners and from the industry, drawing a comparison to seat belt efforts. He said the bus industry has opposed the NTSB’s longstanding seat belt recommendation, and he noted that while several states required seat belts, most school buses do not have them in part because the buses are viewed as relatively safe.
The NTSB said seat belts still matter because children might not wear them, and the agency issued an urgent recommendation last fall asking school districts to take steps to ensure students use seat belts after a Texas crash. The AP reported that the three biggest school bus companies and primary bus manufacturers did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment, and that the National School Boards Association and two major busing trade groups also did not immediately respond.
Even with the push for new impairment detection technology, the NTSB said school bus trips overall remain relatively safe. It cited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics showing that, in the decade leading up to 2023, about 70% of nearly 1,100 people who died in roughly 1,000 fatal crashes involving school buses were in other vehicles rather than the bus, and that 113 school bus passengers were killed in that period.
Attorney Todd Spodek, whose New York law firm has handled tens of thousands of drunken driving cases, said the recommendation should not violate bus drivers’ rights. He argued that the safety benefits of ensuring drivers are not impaired far outweigh any inconvenience. “If you’re in a position of control of something like that, you should be held to a higher scrutiny,” Spodek said. “It’s a minor inconvenience with a tremendous upside.”