Letter: Putting students on the bus will save money and lives

A 1995 report by the National Research Council to the Department of Transportation states that nationwide, 800 children are killed each year commuting to and from school.

According to the Associated Press, 2 percent of the 800 fatalities occurred in school bus wrecks, or 16 deaths. Passenger car accidents, in contrast, accounted for 75 percent of the fatalities, or 600 deaths. Of the vehicular accidents, teen drivers were at the wheel 55 percent of the time, while with adult drivers at the wheel, the percentage was 20 percent. Children also get to and from school by other buses, by bicycle and by walking.

School buses are, therefore, much safer than passenger vehicles. Also, if all children rode in school buses, there would be many benefits, including better control and the children's location would be better known; children would learn to communicate better; there would be less need for the purchase of property and construction of fewer parking lots; work time would be saved due to less traffic congestion; less fuel would be used and less pollution and less expense to families.

Consider gasoline for a moment. Teenage drivers parking 100 cars per high school (a low estimate), with each car driving an average of 20 miles per day equals 2,000 miles times 15 miles per gallon equals 133.3 gallons per day for the 100 high school cars.

That means 660.5 gallons of gas would be required per week, or 2,666 gallons of gas per month. Multiply this by nine months of school and you get 23,994 gallons per year for 100 high school cars.

Iredell County has five public high schools, which gives you 119,970 gallons of gas. There are 433 high schools in North Carolina, which gives you over 10 million gallons of gas used. There are 21,774 high schools in the United States, 19,665 middle schools and 50,681 elementary schools.

Do you want to save lives, reduce gas consumption and reduce pollution? Put your children on school buses.

Daniel Ray
Union Grove