Driven to distraction

Rush hour for many residents of Tangwan town in Minhang district is the time when hundreds of parents head to schools to drop off or pick up their children. They arrive outside the schools on mopeds, bikes, motorcycles, in cars, trucks, SUVs and vans. Some walk. The streets around the schools are clogged with rivers of parents, students, teachers, workers, police and residents.

Some experts believe that an adequate school bus system would help solve this problem and would offer safer transport for the students. But school buses also have problems.

Last year in Gansu Province in November at least 20 children died and 44 were injured in a school bus accident. In December in Jiangsu another school bus accident killed 15 children. Inferior-quality vehicles and bad management were blamed for the accidents. The State Council drafted a regulation on school bus safety in December last year to solicit public opinion.

There are 2,332 registered school buses serving 416 primary and middle schools and kindergartens in Shanghai - just 20 percent of the total number of schools. These buses help transport some 60,000 students daily, according to the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.

Frequent inspections

"Every school bus must be registered as well as the bus driver. And we have frequent inspections of the buses," said Li Junxiu, the deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. He said that school buses in Shanghai had an enviable safety record with none being involved in major traffic accidents since 2007.

Only a third of the school buses are owned by schools; the rest are sourced from vehicle rental companies. From this year education authorities have required that all school buses in the city are painted yellow and carry obvious school logos to differentiate them from ordinary vehicles.

But by September 2009 all the public schools in downtown Shanghai had stopped using school buses. Most students were living near their schools and it was felt that there was no real need for the buses. Currently most school buses serve private schools and those in suburban areas where there are large numbers of migrant workers' children.

According to Wei Kairen, the deputy director of the Traffic Police Corps of Shanghai Public Security Bureau, there are serious safety concerns in transporting school children in Shanghai mostly involving overloaded and unlicensed vehicles.

Outside the Tangwan Primary School in Minhang, the Global Times observed several parents driving from the school, often with more than one child clutching onto a moped.

Last November after an accident involving a private car picking up children in Songjiang district, the police in Songjiang introduced a campaign to address the problems. Some 20 private vehicles driven by parents were found during the action, some overloaded with passengers and some illegally modified.

Jiang Wencheng, a publicity officer with the Songjiang district traffic police, told the Global Times that it was difficult for the police to identify and punish "private school buses."