Dicing with death

The crash of two Bahrain school buses last Friday was an accident waiting to happen.

Although the police are investigating this particular incident and the full details are yet to emerge, there isn’t a school day that goes by where I haven’t noticed one school bus or other driving too fast, cutting in front of on-coming cars or with a driver talking on a mobile phone.
It’s a complete mystery to me how some drivers have little or no control over and regard for the lives of the children they are supposed to be looking after.
Most of the children we see in the buses are either hanging out of windows or moving around the bus freely while the driver pays little attention to the road around him.
With the school timings being what they are, many parents have little choice but to send their children to and from school on the buses and the very least the bus companies should do is take measures to ensure they have safe drivers for the children in their care.
Not only is it logical from a business point of view to make sure they can get the passengers from A to B safely, it’s also a moral obligation we all share to do our best not to kill or injure others while driving.
As for enforcing the rules of the road, I’ve lost count of the amount of times erratic bus drivers are ignored by traffic police on the roads with them, but I guess that’s hardly surprising when you take into consideration that a few weeks ago I saw one such traffic policeman waving to a fellow traffic policeman while driving in his badly dented car, talking on his mobile with his wife in the passenger seat and child on his knee hanging out the window.
Talk about setting an example!