School bus driver refused to drop my daughter home

Oh, come off it. Grown adults have been know to cry at "situations". This is a child with strongly suspected autism suddenly catapulted into a potentially dangerous situation and not knowing whether she'll be able to access any help.

It's quite extraordinary how people manage to shoehorn blame onto a disabled child rather than contemplate the possibility that an OP might have valid cause for concern.

lol. you're joking, right?

We actually do know that he didn't just drop them off and drive away because OP was able to go and talk to him

We know nothing of the sort. OP was able to talk to him because she made it to the bus stop just in time.

A contingency plan is not needed when there is nothing blocking the route between where the bus is and where it needs to go to. If the issue is drivers' hours, then the contingency should be either sending a different driver or arranging a second driver. Expecting children's parents to bail the company out at no notice can never be the contingency plan for this eventuality.

The OP said "other children" not "lots of other children".

And I am presuming that they were being dropped off at their normal stop and they could walk home from there.

The OP said she was able to speak to the driver I had words with him and he was completely rude, ignorant, aggressive and arrogant about it. He refused to give me his name and said it would have take him too long to take her home (it would have been an extra time for him) and there wasn’t another option so the DD wasn’t left alone in the dark.
A child in Year 9 will either be 13 or 14. If they only turned 13 3 weeks ago then they would be in Year 8. They could have actually turned 14 on 1st September.

From off the bus?

OP has said her DD was dropped at a "normal" stop where other children get off.
She also mentioned other children that go to her daughter's normal stop.
DD was not the only child that was left on the bus. The nature of school buses is that they require a certain number of children to be economically viable and the bus company would be quickly shortening the route without enough children travelling to later stops.

(This is exactly what happened to my DB and SIL who now have to drive 15 minutes further to their school bus's new nearest stop)

If he was out of his legal driving hours, then he should stop, call a relief driver and wait there until that driver arrives.

If he is over the hours he is contracted to drive for the school, then he needs to take that up with them, there should be overtime for that.

Neither of these things is a justifiable reason for dumping a child where they can't walk home, where they may be waiting ages for someone to come get them, and relying on their friends or whoever else gets off at that stop (who may not be their friends at all!) to wait with them.

Where did the "lots of other children" come from?!!

How naive can a person be?!! He drives a bus because it's his job and he gets paid for it.

Do people do volunteer shifts at orphanages?!

Surely if he had been at risk of going over his hours, he would have said that?!

Not acceptable. The firm are providing a service to get the child home. That's what they need to do. Maybe in this situation the driver did the only thing he could, but not making sure that the driver has a enough hours to complete the job if there is traffic is ridiculous. The firm should lose the contract.

I would have gone batshit crazy at the bus driver and the bus company.

I pay for a private bus to bring my daughter home. If they deviated from the normal route and dropped my daughter elsewhere with no adult present, I would have doubled up on my batshittery.

My theory is, I've paid for a service, for the bus company to take and bring my daugher from A to B and return from school. Unless road works or bad weather ( or occasionally, the bus breaks down ) dictate, do not deviate from the normal route. And drop her off at the normal stop, not some 15 minutes drive away. If I wanted her dropped off 15 mins away, I wouldn't be paying for the service.

And I'm not bothered about the driver being over his allocated driving quota. That's not my problem. That's a problem for the bus company. They should have got someone who wasn't over their alloted time or employ more people.

I'd complain to the bus company and demand this does not happen again. There's no excuse.

😂😂

He was planning on leaving her at the stop with the other children who would also get off there.

Yes, OP did manage to get there in time in the end, but it was unclear this would be possible when child first rang OP, and driver still intended to drop child nonetheless.

Having read tge ops post more carefully, she was at 'new' stop before tge kid in question.She was not on her own at all, no safeguarding risk! Saying the driver would have driven off without seeing the passengers had arrangements in place, seem to be supposition.

The bus not showing up or being unable to run is annoying but it’s not unsafe.

Your child will be at home or at worst they will be at their local stop wondering why the bus isn’t there - they can easily get home once it’s clear bus isn’t coming.

If the bus breaks down then the driver presumably stays with the bus and all the kids can stay too until collected.

Any of these are far better from a safety perspective than leaving a child unattended a long way from home.

ETA: and all the issues you list affect private coach services too!

I'm sorry OP, that must have been an absolutely awful experience for her and for you. SEN aside, most kids would be thrown and worried to be unexpectedly dropped somewhere they weren't expecting and weren't used to, and left to make their own arrangements. I wouldn't play heavily on the SEN side when you complain, it's unacceptable to abandon any child in a strange place, that's the point.

I'd involve the school safeguarding officer in the complaint, too. Leaving children in a strange place (in the dark!) without handing them over to a suitable responsible adult is a HUGE safeguarding no no, anybody with common sense would know that. He was a bloody fool for what he did, including refusing to give his name, as he is clearly going to be easily identified by his employers by which route he was driving at the time.

You realise a lot of children don't go to school on private transport but on regular service buses. .My LEA issued bus passes for service buses for the 7 mile journey from our small village to school.Sometimes they dont turn up or break down or the road is closed.The parents just have to pick up the slack because there's only 1 or 2 buses a day!

In your shoes, I’d create merry hell over this as it’s a serious safeguarding error. Surely there must be training provided for the drivers around what to do in the event of breaking down or a road being closed etc?

Not in U.K. We’re rural with country roads and no pavements and DS goes to the local secondary school which is about 7 miles away in the main town.

Our school bus is a run by a private company and paid for by the local authority. It collects DS en route outside our house and drops him back after school. It usually takes around 45 mins.

The local provider is very reliable since they took over the route 3 years ago from the main coach company (roughly equivalent to National Express) and they use very modern coaches and I honestly can’t imagine the drivers ever leaving a child stranded miles away from home. The previous provider used older (knackered) buses which broke down occasionally. However, they’d never leave a child to find their own way home.

It was completely irresponsible of the bus driver to drop her off a long way from her home in the dark without ascertaining that someone would be there to meet her. I would be raising hell if it was me.

He actually did say some thing to OP about driving for extra time (which may or may not mean he was over hours).

OP says this bus is normally due in at 7.15pm. So even it it was on time, which it wasn't due to the delays, he would only have had to start at 9.15am to be over the 10 hours of driving time. Which doesn't sound that unlikely for a bus driver.

And he did not leave the child alone. OP arrived to collect her while he was still there. None of us on here know if he would have left the child alone or what he would have done if no one could collect her. People asserting he would have just left her are the ones "making stuff up".

There's also the assumption that someone would just be able to come and pick her up. When no one is paying for a private bus if it was that easy to just go and pick someone up.

Sure, in the OP's case it was an issue of logistics. But it just as easily could have been a single parent looking after a sick child or the only parent at home was a non-driver with the other partner away, or unable to leave home for one of many other reasons. Not everyone has a support network or a car and the ability to get there.

this, as other posters have pointed out. What are the chances that a private bus driver has been driving constantly since about 5.30am? He didn't even use that excuse himself, which you think he would have as it's a pretty clear justification so it's completely bizarre that posters are making stuff up to defend him. The 9 y.o vs year 9 stuff also isn't relevant because there's no guidance saying at what age it's okay to leave a child alone, so if he did it to OP's 13/14 y/o there's no guarantee he wouldn't have done the same to a younger child. 15 mins drive could be 10 miles walking if OP didn't have a car or was completely unable to get there, seriously what was her dd supposed to do? What if she didn't have a phone or it wasn't charged? It's completely irresponsible of him

So, yep. No argument possible.

Child safety wins.

This is actually epic 👏👏👏