Family calls for school bus safety measures to be implemented after death of 22-year-old woman
A federal task force investigating school bus safety issued reports in 2019 and 2020 with a suite of recommendations, but the majority are not implemented
A month after 22-year-old Rachel Turner was fatally struck by the driver of a school bus near her home in the Beaches, her family is demanding answers and pointing to flaws in a system that saw school bus drivers collide with and kill three people in the last five months.
Turner’s parents and boyfriend held a press conference outside their home on Wednesday, just steps away from the accident scene, where toys, flowers and candles still decorate a roadside memorial.
“I just don’t want Rachel to be a statistic,” her father, Leon, told reporters in a quavering voice. “Nobody should have to go through this, what we’re going through.”
According to Mike Smitiuch, a lawyer representing the Turner family, recent school bus fatalities are the result of a lack of sufficient technological upgrades on school buses and poor driver training.
And although a federal task force investigating school bus safety issued reports in 2019 and 2020 with a suite of recommendations, the majority remained unimplemented, he said.
“This isn’t us to stand up here. This is our daughter,” said her mother, Susan. “My daughter would stand up if it had happened to anyone in this community, she’d be the first one to look into it and say: ‘This doesn’t make sense.’”
The task force found the majority of injuries and fatalities involving school buses take place outside the bus.
I put up this story in the Star because I used to teach for a couple of years back in the day school bus safety in local schools while a community service officer. I like what I’m reading here and concerned parents should pick up. Doug Ford has once again dropped the ball on this file and he should not be permitted to get away with it.
He is after all Ontario’s head “village idiot” and voters need to know that about him. Bonnie will be along soon enough and that thought scares him half to death and it would because he’s like your pet dog when you pick up a newspaper and bang it on your hand.
Like that dog he’s all attention because that’s what well trained dogs do and that is just about the level of Doug Ford’s intelligence.
Pandering asshole that he is!
Dogs’ do that stuff too.