The Cookeville Herald Citizen featured Cumberland’s Ashley Scurlock and touted IC Bus Safety Benefits this past weekend.
Electronic stability. Full view camera technology. Collision mitigation.
Those are some of the terms used to describe safety improvements for Putnam County’s newest school buses.
“These are the Cadillac buses that we got this time,” said Transportation Director Kim Bradford, describing five new vehicles that went into service this week. “We are very, very fortunate that we got these.”
Sales rep Ashley Scurlock said the Cadillac description comes not from the cost ($104,226 per vehicle), but from the safety features included with the 78-passenger buses.
“Collision mitigation alerts the driver if something is in their way,” she said. “If the driver is distracted driving down the road, there is radar that checks the path that the bus is on and will alert the driver that they need to make a decision because something is stopped in their path.”
In some cases, the bus will brake on its own to avoid a collision, she said. Besides that, electronic stability control works to prevent the bus from rolling over if a driver takes a turn too sharply. The buses also have updated camera systems, including a back-up camera that allows the driver to see a wide-angle view immediately behind the bus. That camera complements others on the inside.
“We’ve got five cameras. We’ve got a camera in the back that shows what’s going on in the back of the bus, we’ve go two in the middle, we’ve got one on the driver and one on the dash facing out,” Bradford said. “We’re fortunate enough that one of the buses also has the stop sign camera on it.”