School bus driver refused to drop my daughter home

[Theherringbones]

My year 9 daughter gets the school bus service home from school everyday. Its a private service for her school only and It’s about a 50 minute journey.

Tonight there is an unusual amount of traffic on the roads. The driver refused to drop my daughter at her (home) stop as it would take him too long to get there. He said he would drop her somewhere 15 minutes away and she would have to have someone pick her up. She was in tears in the phone to me. The usual 50 minute trip took him about 80 minutes.

The bus stop she was dropped at is a clear run to our home as it’s the back roads and there was no traffic on them. I know that it would have taken him an extra 15 minutes to drop her home, but it is his job!

I was stuck in the middle of the traffic in the opposite direction, trying to collect my other child and had to make all sorts of crazy arrangements with friends to get to her. Luckily I made it just in time.

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.

How can a private bus service that is the only reason she can attend this school, refuse to drop her home? Am I being unreasonable or should he have dropped her home, no matter what?!

What if the driver was late for his volunteer shift at the orphanage? He probably only drives the bus out of the goodness of his heart.

But the child was not unsafe? The driver advised her to call someone, she did, and the driver was able to observe that she was collected by a parent.

People are assuming he would have driven off and left children at the stop regardless of whether anyone picked them up or not, but we have no actual evidence of this.

It's getting worse. I've been here years and I've never seen so many posters desperate to post how Obviously Wrong an OP is that they imagine all sorts that's entirely different from what OP has actually posted.

Complain op. I would be utterly furious. He's paid to drop her at a stop. He took another route and decides to leave a child stranded who he is responsible for. Fgs 'law' over hours drive. Common sense should take over then.
What if op couldn't make it in time. Weather was awful yesterday and being far from home can completely overwhelm a child. So unacceptable.

That’s totally unacceptable of him. Your poor DD! If someone dropped me off in an unfamiliar location in the dark a couple of hours from home I’d be very frightened, I can’t believe anyone is suggesting your daughter is overreacting! I hope it hasn’t knocked her confidence too badly.

I worked as an ops manager for a large bus company for nearly 20 years and also a qualified transport manager. It is unlikely although not impossible that the driver was close to his driving hours for the day, there are exceptions for extenuating circumstances, plus the traffic commissioner who oversees the regulation of bus drivers and operators would be unlike to fine the driver or operator if they could demonstrate that the driving hours had been exceeded due to circumstances out of their control and safeguarding. A relief driver might be an option but if traffic was an issue I suspect that it wouldn't have resolved the problem. If the service is under 50km then domestic driving hours would apply and not eu and therefore tachograph records aren't relevant. The driving hours also differ under the regulations. It would be interesting to know Op if the service is operated under contract or is run directly by the school, vehicle type is also relevant. Lots of school bus drivers do set runs with split shifts as the spread over duty time is 16 hours.
Ultimately the driver should not have done this to your daughter and you are right that it's a safeguarding issue and one that would attract a disciplinary sanction. If you want to pm me happy to help.

It’s really really tedious.

Traffic problems are entirely predictable. If the hours issue was the reason here, the fact is that this driver went out so near the end of his hours that only 30 minutes would have taken him over. It's up to the contractor to arrange their staffing and shifts to ensure that doesn't happen.

It simply isn't an excuse for putting a child in a potentially dangerous situation. Blaming the child is just ridiculous.

So many posts on here saying "she had her phone on her", i.e. it's not a problem.
Interestingly on the threads where schools ban children bringing phones into school at all (rather than banning them from class, collecting them in etc) you get endless posters bashing the OP and saying the child doesn't need a phone for the journey to and from home. Yes, they do, for incidents like this and no, there aren't phone boxes all over the place like when I was at school in the 90s.

This.

From the sounds of it its a for profit company closed door ( ie not picking up the public) bus.

No way the driver should have done this, it would be a final written warning and possibly the sack when I was driving.

It works both ways though.

There have equally been an awful lot of posters who have turned this into the bus driver abandoning a 9 year old on their own in a random place miles away from anywhere and expecting them to walk 2 hours home in the dark.

Not a 13 year old dropped off at a normal bus stop with lots of other children where mum was there to collect.

This is so blatantly unacceptable that I'm honestly shocked that aome people on this thread are making out it was completely fine!

The mental gymnastics exhibited by some posters in their eagerness to kick the OP and her child are quite something to behold. Worthy of Olympic gold, really.

This post in itself involves yet more misrepresentation of the facts.

Only a couple of posters made the age mistake, it may look like more because people keep responding to the same post. At the time he told the child he wasn't taking her to her stop, neither he nor the child knew her mother would be able to make it in time. I really don't see why it's somehow OK to leave a child at a bus stop just because other children are getting off at the same one - surely it's obvious that they won't be staying there with her?

OP was only able to make it by the skin of her teeth and by interrupting her journey to collect another child and making all sorts of complicated arrangements with friends to collect the other child. She might well have been much further away or in a situation where she couldn't drop everything to come to collect. What was the driver going to do if she hadn't been able to get there? Instead of being apologetic he chose to be rude, evasive and confrontational.

What response did you get from the school and bus company OP?

The bus driver didn't know the OP would be able to collect her.
No buses went to her home from that bus stop.
It is the bus driver's job to drive the children to the designated bus stops, not to just abandon them somewhere.

What has the school said? There would be a person in charge of transport - the bus driver would have their emergency contact number. As other’s said he might have run out of legal hours of driving (they would do other jobs during the day) but he should have waited with them / had his first send out an emergency driver instead of ask several parents to come to that same bus stop.
I don’t care if your daughter is in year 9 or year 13 - as a parent you are expecting the bus to drop her off at an agreed bus stop on a service you paid for - appalling he dropped them off at the wrong bus stop.

What if op didn't have a car? What if the child was attacked on route home? The situation beggars belief. I would be livid and make a strong complaint.

In trying to make OP's concerns sound unreasonable, you've artistically left out the basic fact the bus stop in question was 15 minutes' drive away from the stop at which the driver was paid to drop the child off. The driver effectively announced he wasn't going to fulfil his contract and it was up to other people to sort it out. How is that OK?

Suppose you paid a taxi to take you to a specific destination and, half way through the journey, he told you he was going to drop you 5 miles away, he wasn't going to refund you, but it was OK because you could phone a relative who might or might not be available to collect you and there might be other people around - how happy would you be?

The desperation to make this ok is extraordinary.

It wasn’t ok

I imagine he’ll be sacked. If he isn’t he’ll be on a written warning and the school will likely require that he is not assigned to any of their routes.

We do not know that he was going to abandon them. That's something posters have made up. 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. It's equally possible that he would wait until they were picked up or until a replacement bus/driver/taxi could be provided. That's clearly something OP needs to ascertain when she calls the bus company - what should happen in this situation.

Things happen that stop buses progressing as planned, all the time (round us at the moment, it's flooding and yes, we have school children left at places other than their usual stop). There should be a contingency plan in place. Maybe this is the contingency plan (ask children to call parents, if they cannot be picked up proceed to Plan B). Personally I'd find that a perfectly acceptable contingency plan.

What we do know is that OP's DD was safe. She was not "dumped" or "abandoned" anywhere. She was collected by a parent. I absolutely agree OP should follow up and work out what happened and what the plan is if the bus can't get to the assigned stop. But based on what she's posted, we do not know the driver did anything wrong.

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/24609113.romsey-school-bus-driver-abandoned-pupils-due-traffic/

Nothing is clear cut, the article sounds awful but the comments are different. 5 mins walk for senior school children isn't really an issue .

This might not be you but the circumstances are no doubt similar. Year 9 should be able to walk a short distance

I’m pretty sure he actually hauls the bus himself, like a heroic wee pony. And he pays the parents, not the other way around, while the children get out little riding crops and make him go faster while taunting him with their tiny voices.

I wasn't talking about OP's concerns. I was talking about posters who were unable to read the OP and were making things up, in exactly the same way that you were. Everything I said has been actually posted on this thread by other people.

It’s clearly not the same story as the Romsey children were on their way to school and it wasn’t 7pm in the evening.

OP’s child wasn’t left in a town centre either but on a country road.