State Probe : Laidlaw Bus Accident Rate ‘Scary’

The school bus accident rate in two Santa Clarita school districts is nearly four times higher than the state average, California Highway Patrol officials told state legislators Tuesday during a hearing called to investigate bus service in the districts.

“It’s way too high, and it’s unacceptable,” Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) said of Laidlaw Transit’s accident record in the William S. Hart Union High School District and Newhall School District. Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee holding the hearing, called the statistics “scary.”

Capt. Bill Kelley, commander of the CHP Newhall office, said the combined accident rate for the Hart and Newhall districts during the 1987-88 school year was 35.2 accidents per 1 million miles traveled. Statewide, the average was 9.2 accidents for every million miles, he said.

A year earlier, Kelley said, the accident rate for the two districts was 23.4 accidents per 1 million miles. The state average that school year was eight accidents per 1 million miles.

Accident Classification

The highway patrol classifies as an accident everything from a traffic collision to a child falling off his bus seat during a sharp turn, said Officer Ralph Elvira, who inspects school buses in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Kelley did not provide details on the nature of the Laidlaw bus accidents or whether any children were injured.

The statistics were the most surprising revelations to surface during a 3 1/2-hour hearing at San Fernando City Hall into Laidlaw Transit, the largest bus company in the state and the nation. Laidlaw, with 140 contracts in about 80 school districts statewide, has provided bus service for 3,600 Hart and Newhall students for three years.

Katz said the hearing was prompted by allegations that Laidlaw bus drivers made sexual advances toward students, sold drugs on the job, cruelly disciplined unruly students and provided inefficient service. The committee also heard two former Laidlaw bus drivers and a bus yard manager testify that driving instructors falsified training records to show that rookie drivers received more training than they had received.

The aim of the legislative committee’s 1-day hearing was to investigate whether state laws should be strengthened to improve school-bus safety or operations.

It would be up to the CHP, which also is investigating, to pursue criminal proceedings against the company or its employees should wrongdoing be found. The state Department of Education, which sets guidelines for bus driver training and performance, is also investigating.

Committee members and two legislators invited to join the panel--state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) and Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley)--said the hearing raised more questions than it answered. “Everything seems to be allegations, and we don’t have anything concrete,” Wright said.

But the legislators agreed that they were disturbed by the accident rate in the two Santa Clarita districts. “Laidlaw operates buses all over California,” Katz said. Why, he asked, was the company having problems in Santa Clarita?

“Basically, I think it’s to do with inexperience,” Kelley said.

Kelley said the accident rates in three other Santa Clarita Valley districts--Saugus, Castaic and Sulphur Springs--are much lower than the Hart and Newhall districts because drivers in those school systems generally have more experience than Laidlaw drivers.

In the last school year, the accident rate was 7.7 accidents per million miles in Castaic and 8.9 accidents per million miles for Saugus. Sulphur Springs did not record any accidents.

The inexperience could result from frequent turnover among Laidlaw drivers. The company generally pays drivers lower wages than school districts that hire their own drivers, and high turnover is a problem for the company, said William Johnson, a Laidlaw vice president.

Johnson could not explain the high accident rate in the Newhall and Hart districts but said the figures could be misleading because some districts under-report accidents. The figures from rural districts--where road mishaps are less frequent than in urban areas such as Santa Clarita--distort statewide averages, Johnson said.

Also Tuesday, a Laidlaw bus carrying 91 elementary school children struck a parked pickup truck in Corona in Riverside County, the CHP said.

Eighteen of the children were treated at hospitals for minor injuries, officials said.

The bus driver had been following close behind a van, CHP spokeswoman Dee Luna said. The van suddenly changed lanes and the driver of the bus, seeing the parked truck too late, was unable to stop and slammed into the pickup, causing major damage to both vehicles, she said.