to expect the school bus to be roadworthy?

[sazm]

hi,
just looking for some feedback about this:

yesterday my ds (5yo) got the school bus home as normal,when the bus drove away form our house i noticed a bit of metal lying on hte ground.When i went over to it,i realised it was one of the break pads which had fell off the bus!(there were still 10 kids on the bus at this point)
I phoned the school who said they would phone the bus company.
When i spoke to the driver today,he said he got a message from his employer when he got home to tell him what had happened and when he got to work this morning they had put new pads on the bus.

Does anyone know who i complain to?
I spoke to the school this morning and they told me they had phoned the bus company but that was all they could do.
Surely the bus should be serviced regularly?the break pads fell off because they were actually rubbing the metal,there was no breakpad left,so its obviously a long while since its been checked.
It saves me a lot of hassle by my ds getting the bus home,but i would rather have a bit of hassle and know my son is safe!if the breaks are that bad,is the rest of the bus safe.
Should the school also be complaining or am i just being PFB with this????

thanks for reading

you could try phoning your lea who give the transport compaones the contracts. affraid it is nothing to do with the school. although as i understand it, as we had a school bus that kept breaking down every day with primary age, the lea give them the contracts and its down to the companies whose contract it is to make sure they are road worthy so theres not much the lea can do either, however if you conplain to the lea and so do ther parents it may affect the new contact being given to them at the time of renewal. only other option is to report the to the police and see if you can get any joy there.

its a council bus,not a private company,dont know if that makes a difference?

if thats right then it would definately be the transport dept at your local lea you would need to speak to ask for a manager get his name and also put your complaint in writing asking for a response. Even if they admit there was a problem they will probably say its been addressed and there is nothing to be concerned about all you can hthen do is monitor the situation. if in any doubt take your child off the bus. other than that i dont think theres alot you can actually do.

the bus company took the bus in straight away and replaced the worn brake pads,so thats good,
but i just cant believe they dont check things like that more often,
i would never go out in my car if it had break pads half as bad as that,never mind taking 20+ kids in it!

I work in school transport (Scotland) and we expect all our contract school buses to be serviced regularly and kept in good working condition. If they're not then we can issue penalties in the form of fines and can result in them losing the school transport contract. This only works for buses that we contract though and not public service ones.

Get in touch with your council to complain. Also, the school should be complaining as it was potentially a safety risk.

! You definitely need to complain / bring this to the attention of someone higher up. School buses should definitely be serviced very regularly and the council / LEA should demand proof of this if necessary.

Would second what FunkyMonkey said. I also work in school transport, we have a contract with a service provider to service our buses to a regular schedule and there are penalties if this does not happen. Your local authority will definitely need to know about this, so please call them.
Having said that, did you actually see it fall off the bus yourself? I would be very surprised if the bus was in such a state of disrepair, as it would indicate that it had not been inspected for a while. However, the only way of knowing for sure is to call the council who will get the bus to the workshop pdq.