A child is perhaps the most precious cargo a vehicle can carry. And yet regulations to protect children travelling in school buses are still not adhered to in the UAE. As we reported yesterday, 220 of Dubai's schools have accumulated fines for school-bus violations in the past six months, many for the use of vehicles and drivers that did not have the proper permits to transport pupils to and from school.
Driving an unofficial school bus may seem to be a small crime. When you consider that drivers provide far less deference to minibuses than they do to officially-marked school buses, the danger of these vehicles should be clear. Even large vehicles marked as school buses but lacking special signals indicating when they are stopping or allowing children to exit can be deadly. Since 2008, several children have been killed in the UAE as they exited a bus, while four-year-old Aiman Zeeshanuddin was the most recent to die of heat and dehydration when left inside of one.
The UAE is not the first nation to confront this challenge. From the bright "nanny vans" of Hong Kong, to the trademark yellow school buses in the United States and Canada that mandate that drivers stop a certain distance behind them as students exit, there are a variety of options to consider. But this is not a policy challenge that merits deliberation; a solution must be selected among the many available and rapidly and rigorously implemented.
While precautions such as hiring bus supervisors are in the works in Dubai, school administrators have argued that this process is hampered by paper work. Red tape should not be an obstacle to protecting children. While past tragedies have seen parents, the government, and administrators temporarily banding together, this commitment has proven impermanent. A policy must be instituted that proves more enduring and more effective than the fading memories of the last school-bus tragedy.