DEVELOPING A SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY PROGRAM
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Students are at much greater risk traveling to and from school than at any other time in their school day. During the 1997-98 school year, about 800 children between the ages of 5 through 18 were killed during normal school transportation hours while traveling by passenger car, foot, bicycle, public transportation and school bus.1 Many more were injured or suffered close calls. These injuries and deaths affect everyone in the community. Given the success of community-based initiatives to improve other aspects of transportation safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched its Getting to School Safely program to address the full range of school transportation safety issues. Through the Getting to School Safely Community Action Kit, NHTSA is providing communities across the United States with resources to help them conduct programs aimed at improving the safety of students traveling to and from school. School transportation safety programs are as diverse as the ways students get to school and the types of safety problems they encounter. They can range from a one-time event, such as a bike rally or participation in National Walk Our Children to School Day, to a longer-term initiative that addresses various aspects of transportation safety throughout the school year. The following guidelines will help you design and implement an effective program to improve school transportation safety in your community. Involving Partners Before you begin developing your program, it is important to build partnerships with groups and individuals within your community that have a vested interest in promoting school transportation safety. Partnerships enable you to share the work while increasing the effectiveness of your program. Begin your search for partners by checking to see if your community has a Safe Communities Coalition, a SAFE KIDS Coalition, or other organizations that address injury prevention, health and safety, or children's issues. (For information on Safe Communities Coalitions, contact the Safe Communities Service Center at 817-978-4423 or visit the Safe Communities Web site at www.nhtsa.dot.gov/safecommunities. For a list of SAFE KIDS Coalitions, contact the National SAFE KIDS Campaign at 202-662-0200 or www.safekids.org.) Coalitions are hard to form, so if such groups exist in your community, make every effort to join them (or invite them to join you). There are many compelling reasons to join such groups. They may already have identified and resolved obstacles to data collection in your community, and they may have collected a significant amount of data that will help you design your program. Their contacts with other community groups and local businesses can be helpful when it comes time to distribute your materials and publicize your events. Finally, coalitions that have an established presence within your community can provide credibility and ongoing support that will help sustain your program over time. In addition to such coalitions, many other groups have a vested interest in promoting school transportation safety. These include the following: State and local law enforcement agencies and sheriffs' offices can play an important role in reducing illegal passing of school buses and in enforcing relevant laws, such as speed and pedestrian laws in school zones, seat belt, bicycle helmet, child safety seat, and motorcycle helmet use laws, and other important regulations. In many communities, local police also provide crossing guards at busy intersections near schools. Keep in touch with your law enforcement agencies throughout the year, and recruit their help early on for any campaign or special event you are sponsoring, such as a child safety seat checkpoint or bike rally. Keep them well stocked with tip sheets, brochures, and other consumer information that they can hand out while conducting tours, speaking at schools, attending community events, etc. Health care facilities and doctors' offices are great places to reach school-age children and their parents with messages about school transportation safety. Invite members of your local medical community to participate in special events such as Walk Our Children to School Day, safety seat clinics, or bicycle safety checks. Provide health care facilities with tip sheets, brochures, and other consumer information to distribute to their patients. Encourage doctors and other health care providers to discuss transportation safety when they see school-age children for immunizations, school physicals, and athletic physicals. For example, they can emphasize booster seat use to parents of four- and five-year-olds, they can remind school-age children to wear a helmet whenever they ride a bike, and they can talk with high school students about the importance of using seat belts and the dangers of drinking and driving. Local bike advocacy groups are excellent partners for your efforts to promote bicycle safety and helmet use. If you are planning events as part of National Bike Month, invite these groups to participate and ask them to publicize the event in their newsletters. For a list of groups in your area, contact the League of American Bicyclists at 202-822-1333 or www.bikeleague.org. A listing of state bicycle and pedestrian coordinators can be found in the State and Regional Resource book contained in this kit. Parent-Teacher Associations at your local schools have networks of committed members with a vested interest in school transportation safety. Community organizations that serve children and youth – such as the YMCA, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Boys' and Girls' clubs, recreation centers, before and after school care programs, sports programs (soccer, football, baseball, etc.), and others are also potential partners. Invite the PTA and community groups to participate in any special events you are planning. Provide them with short newsletter articles that can help increase awareness of school transportation safety issues throughout the year. School offices can provide you with PTA calendars and contact information, and your local newspaper should list upcoming events and contact information for community organizations. Local colleges and universities and academic research institutes can help in many ways. They can be especially valuable as a source of professional expertise for data collection and analysis or program evaluation. AAA sponsors school safety patrol programs in many communities and is a natural ally for your "Getting to School Safely" campaign. Invite your local AAA chapter to participate in special events such as Walk Our Children to School Day. Give them one or more of the "drop-in" articles found in this kit and ask them to use them in the publications they send to members. The faith community can be an excellent resource for delivering your message, whether through presentations by spiritual leaders during services or through newsletters, youth and children's groups, and other activities. Many places of worship run daycare and after-school centers, and some also serve as community activity centers for youth. They communicate frequently with parents, and they often welcome outside speakers and demonstrations related to safety issues. Senior citizens can be important allies, especially if they are grandparents. The local chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons can help you inform grandparents about child passenger safety and recruit them for your program. Set up a child safety seat lending service for visiting grandchildren and offer instruction on how to use the seats properly. For information on seniors groups in your area, contact AARP at 202-434-2277 or www.aarp.org. Other groups with active seniors include veterans groups, faith-based institutions, and community service organizations. Because each group brings a different perspective to the issue, it's a good idea to involve a variety of partners. The specific number and types of partners you choose will depend on the issues you intend to address through your program and the type(s) of event(s) you are planning. When you contact potential partners, be sure to provide them with enough basic information to get them interested in your issue. Keep in mind that supporting your program can in turn benefit them in some way. For example: When a local SAFE KIDS Coalition or community-based organization helps you collect or analyze data, it obtains data that can be used for its own purposes; if it helps you conduct an event, it can inform the public about the issues it promotes. When the principal and PTA support your school's participation in National Walk Our Children to School Day, they draw attention to the importance of having a safe environment at school. When police officers participate in a bike rally or speak at a school assembly, they can help young children develop safe habits that may endure throughout their lives. When local police increase enforcement in one area, such as illegal passing of school buses, they also influence behavior in other areas, such as speeding or seat belt use. When local businesses sponsor your program, they obtain positive publicity for their commitment to the community that may result in increased business. Identifying the Problem Whether you are working as part of a coalition or on your own, the first step in developing an effective program is to identify the most prevalent school transportation safety problems in your community. To do that, you will have to gather various types of data from a number of sources. Data on non-fatal injuries can be found in medical records as well in non-medical data sources such as crash and insurance records. To request access to medical records, contact the emergency department or administrator of your local hospital and the director of your local EMS or ambulance service. Almost all states have computerized police crash data. To request access to this data, contact the Governors’ Highway Safety Representative in your state (contact information can be found in the State and Regional Resources Catalog in this kit). For information collected by insurance companies, contact your state's insurance commissioner or your local insurance agent. When making your request, you should specify that you are seeking data on injuries sustained by school-age children (5 to 18) in traffic crashes during normal school transportation hours. Data on fatal injuries can be highly persuasive when it comes to galvanizing community support for safety programs, even though fatal injuries are far less common than non-fatal injuries. Contact your local police department or medical examiner's office to request data on fatalities among school-age children in traffic crashes during normal school transportation hours. If your community is a town or county, you can also find information on fatal injuries in Vital Statistics reports issued by the Department of Health and available in the reference department of your local library. Demographic information can help you determine whether certain groups in your community may be at risk for transportation related injuries. The U.S. Census Bureau and your local government can provide general demographic data, such as family income and level of education. For specific information regarding the student population in your community, contact your local school system. People who are directly involved with school transportation can provide useful information regarding safety issues. School crossing guards can give you an estimate of the speeding problem near your school. School bus drivers can give examples of unsafe behavior at bus stops and can report the number of illegal passing incidents. (Ask your school system's transportation director for help in collecting data from bus drivers.) The PTA at your school is another excellent source of information. Parents whose children walk to school know where sidewalks, stop signs, or crossing guards are needed to increase safety for pedestrians; those who drive their children to school know whether there are safety issues at the drop-off point or with the traffic pattern near the school. Such input can be invaluable in identifying which issues are of greatest concern to the community and in gauging the potential level of support for your program. Teamwork is essential at this stage, because data can be difficult to get, there may be costs involved, and you may need special software or training to analyze the data. As mentioned earlier, you should join an existing Safe Communities Coalition, SAFE KIDS Coalition, or similar organization in your community if at all possible. These groups may already have collected relevant data from various sources, and they may have identified important obstacles to data collection. Even if they cannot provide you with the data you need, they can give you advice on collecting data in your community and may be able to assist you with data analysis. If there is no such group in your community, you may have to form a team of your own to share this work. Designing Your Program Once you have identified the major school transportation safety problems in your community, it's time to design your program. The first step is to review the list of problems you identified through your data collection and select a key target issue that your program will address, such as bicycle safety, pedestrian safety, illegal school bus passing, or seat belt use among school students. To generate broad-based support for your program, involve the community in this step by asking them to rank the problems you identified in terms of their relative importance. If you are planning a longer-term program that will address several issues, the community's ranking can help you decide how to sequence your activities. Goal and Objectives Having selected your target issue(s), the next step is to specify the overall goal of your program. Your goal statement establishes the big picture: it sets out what you want to accomplish through the activity or program you are sponsoring and provides a general direction for your activities. An example of a goal for a school transportation safety program would be to reduce illegal passing of school buses stopped to load or unload students. Keeping your overall goal in mind, the next step is to define the specific objectives through which you will achieve that goal. This step is critical, because the success of your program will be determined by how well you meet your stated objectives. Program objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Reasonable, and Time-specific.) The following examples illustrate this concept:

SAMPLE OBJECTIVES
NOT-SO-SMART	SMART
To encourage drivers to obey laws prohibiting the passing of school buses	To increase citations issued for illegal passing of school buses by 15 percent in 6 months
To encourage seat belt use among high school students	To increase the number of students using seat belts by 20 percent during this school year, as measured by observational surveys at the school parking lot
To increase awareness of pedestrian safety issues among students and their parents	To have at least 40 families participate in the elementary school school's first Walk Our Children to School Day

Be sure to circulate a draft of your objectives to those who are in a position to determine the fate of your program. It's important to obtain the support of key decision makers from the outset and to make sure that all parties agree about the purpose of the program. Program Components Now that you have established a strong foundation, you can begin to build your program. To a great extent, your target issue and objective will determine the nature and duration of your program. For example, if your issue is bicycle safety and your objective is to raise awareness of the need for students to use bicycle helmets, a bike rally for students and their families would be ideal. If your issue is illegal passing of school buses and your objective is to increase citations, you may need to conduct a community-wide public education campaign combined with increased enforcement by local police over a period of several months. Most transportation safety programs include four basic components: enforcement, education, engineering, and policy/legislation. Enforcement: Activities in this component are designed to increase compliance with traffic laws. School-related enforcement programs generally focus on increasing compliance with school zone speed limits and laws governing passing of school buses. Law enforcement agencies may increase enforcement of such laws at the beginning of the school year or at specific times throughout the year to reinforce the importance of these laws and increase motorists' adherence to them. Selective Traffic Enforcement Programs (STEP programs) have been found to be especially effective. These programs are implemented in waves. The first wave consists of a public education and publicity to raise awareness of the law and inform the public about the upcoming period of increased enforcement. The second wave is a period of increased enforcement, possibly including checkpoints. This is followed by a period of normal enforcement combined with another wave of publicity to inform the public about the results of the increased enforcement. These waves (education/publicity-enforcement/publicity) can be repeated as necessary. Engineering: Although many programs overlook this component, the design and construction of roads, sidewalks, and bike paths has a strong influence on student safety. Other aspects of engineering that affect safety include signage (for example, signs for school bus stops, pedestrian walkways, and school zones), the location of stop signs and traffic lights, markings for pedestrian crosswalks, the length of time traffic lights allow for street crossing, and the condition of sidewalks or bike paths. Education: This is a major component of nearly every transportation safety program. It can encompass a broad range of methods and activities, depending on the objective of your program and the audience you are trying to reach. The methods you would use to increase general public awareness of an issue are different from those you would use to influence a specific behavior within a particular group of people (such as seat belt use among high school students). Many programs incorporate a variety of methods to reach different audiences. For example, a program to reduce illegal passing of school buses might utilize a public education campaign targeting parents, students, teachers, and administrators and the general public to increase their awareness of the dangers of this situation. Specific activities might include (1) providing teachers with materials they can use to help students learn the importance of looking for passing cars before they cross the street at the school bus stop, and (2) sending information to educate parents about the danger of passing, to alert them to help their children look for illegally passing cars at the school bus stop, and to remind them about their obligations as motorists to observe the law. Policy/Legislation: This component includes activities aimed at getting legislation passed or policies established at the state or local level to increase student transportation safety. Your program may include a grassroots campaign promoting legislation to increase fines or points for cars that illegally pass school buses, to enact a bicycle helmet use law, or to increase penalties for speeding in a school zone. Or you may choose to lobby the local school board to establish a policy to specify where motorists can drop students off or pick them up on school property, to define acceptable student behavior on school buses, or to require helmet use by all students who ride bicycles to school. Sample Program Design The following example shows how activities from each of the four components could be used in a bicycle safety program: Component Activity
Enforcement If there is a local bike helmet law, local police can reward children for wearing helmets (with gifts or certificates provided by local businesses) and issue tickets to those who do not wear them. (Tickets can be dismissed if a parent accompanies the child to the station and provides proof of helmet ownership.) If the town has a police bike patrol, it would be desirable to involve these officers in the program in some way.
Engineering Work with local officials to get a bike path built, repaired, or patrolled by police. Evaluate routes bicyclists are taking to get to school. Identify where traffic signs, signals or pavement markings are needed to make the routes safer for riders.
Education Conduct a bike rally or other event to teach how to fit a child to a bike, how to select and fit a bike helmet, and how to safely ride and maintain a bike. If the school offers drivers education, include a lesson on how to share the road with bicyclists. Provide educational materials to students, teachers and parents. Hang posters addressing bicycle safety in schools and other locations students often visit. Remember reinforcing the safety message throughout the year helps students retain the information	.
Legislation/Policy Encourage state or local lawmakers to pass a law or local ordinance requiring the use of helmets, if one does not already exist. Work with schools to establish policies on helmet use by students who bike to school and to establish a safe place to store bikes during the school day. Strategy, Timeline, and Sources of Support The final steps in the planning process are developing a strategy for implementing your program-including a timeline-and identifying sources for support and possible funding. The nature of your program will determine how complex your strategy and timeline need to be and how much support you will require. For example, a one-day bike rally will require a shorter timeline and possibly fewer financial resources than a campaign to get sidewalks built for students who walk to school, though both will require support from a number of groups in the community. Measuring Success Whether you are implementing a one-time event or a longer-term program, it's important to conduct some type of evaluation to measure the impact of your efforts. The evaluation process yields a wealth of information that can help you justify the program's existence and improve it in the future. By conducting a well-designed evaluation, reviewing the results carefully, and applying the lessons learned, you can save time, money, and frustration the next time around. Evaluation results can also be used to publicize success, obtain resources, and gain community support, and they give reinforcement and credit to those who supported, participated in, or funded your effort. There are three main types of evaluation studies: process evaluation, outcome evaluation, and cost-benefit analysis. To get a complete assessment of your program, you may want to include all three types of studies in your evaluation plan, because each measures different things and provides different information. The following summary illustrates how each type of study is used. Process evaluation compares the objectives and planned activities for the program with what is actually being done. It assesses whether the program was implemented as planned, whom the program reached, what resources were spent, what problems were encountered, and how those problems were addressed. Process evaluation is useful in determining how a program should be modified to improve its effectiveness and in documenting any changes that are made. For example, if you are implementing a Walk Our Children to School Day event, you can count participants at your event and ask them to complete evaluation forms. Counting participants will tell you if the event is growing from year to year, and the feedback you receive through the evaluation forms can help you improve the program. Outcome evaluation measures the extent to which the program met its objectives and created changes in knowledge, attitudes, and/or behavior. Because outcome evaluation is much more complex and costly than process evaluation, you will probably need to bring in outside expertise. The evaluation specialist will design the evaluation, develop sampling plans and data collection forms, recruit and train data collectors, collect the data, provide interim feedback to you during the implementation of the program, analyze the data and present the findings, and provide input to you as you draw conclusions from the findings. He or she can also help you determine what can be measured and what types of questions you will be able to answer. A specialist in public health or social science research and evaluation would be well qualified to provide such assistance, and graduate students in these fields can help with data collection. Your NHTSA Regional Office or the Governors’ Highway Safety Representative in your state may be able to provide names of evaluators in your area (contact information for both groups can be found in the State and Regional Resources book in this kit). Local colleges and universities, academic research institutes, and public health agencies are also good sources of evaluation expertise. If program limitations make it difficult for you to conduct a full-scale outcome evaluation, there are other ways you can measure the impact of your program. Observational surveys are one way to measure the impact of a program. If you are planning to conduct a "buckle up" program, you can count the number of students wearing seat belts as they enter the school parking lot or are dropped off at the school to obtain a baseline, or starting point. Following the program, you can conduct another round of the survey to determine whether the number of students wearing seat belts has increased. Anecdotal observations can be helpful in providing information that may be missing from numerical data. For example, data on traffic-related injuries or fatalities will not include near misses, yet these incidents can be critical in determining where problems exist. Ask people in your community if they have seen any dangerous situations as children travel to and from school in their neighborhoods. Their stories can be compelling evidence of the types of problems that exist, and soliciting their input will help you gain support for your program. Cost-benefit analysis is used to compare the costs of a program to the benefits derived from that program. Although this type of evaluation is often overlooked, the results of a cost-benefit analysis can be a significant factor in deciding whether to expand or continue a program. If you plan on conducting a cost-benefit analysis, you will need to gather baseline cost data before you implement your program so that you can determine whether your initiative actually reduced costs or increased benefits to the community. Because evaluation is an integral part of program implementation, it should be built into the program design from the start. As soon as you have identified your target issue and determined your goal and objectives, you should develop a plan for measuring the results of your program. Your evaluation plan should include: What you will measure How and when you will measure it How you will analyze your results How you will report the evaluation results to your funding source, the media, and the general public Programs often go without evaluation because of a perceived or real lack of resources. One way to overcome this problem is to work with partners in your community. Check with the individuals and organizations participating in your program to see if you can pool resources for an evaluation. Ask local colleges or universities if they can help you identify graduate students who could help you design and conduct an evaluation study. Some students may be able to design and conduct the evaluation as part of a course requirement. Contact the agencies that fund your programs and urge them to allocate more resources for evaluation, because evaluation can help them identify good programs that should be replicated as well as ineffective programs that should no longer be funded. Resources The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has developed numerous resources to help communities develop and evaluate traffic safety and injury prevention programs. The Getting Started Manual developed for NHTSA's Safe Communities program provides excellent information on how to organize a community-based effort to reduce and prevent injuries (currently being updated). The Art of Appropriate Evaluation: A Guide for Highway Safety Program Managers (DOT HS 808 894) provides a detailed, step-by-step approach to building evaluation into a traffic safety program. You can obtain these and other documents at NHTSA's web site (www.nhtsa.dot.gov), by faxing a document request to

(202) 493-2062, or by filling out the order form in the Materials Catalog included in this kit.

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