Do you know how fast this bus was going?   Of course not … likely even the driver doesn’t … arm yourself with knowledge to protect passenger’s safety, corporate liability and even the driver’s reputation:

Two people aboard an otherwise empty school bus avoided injury
Friday afternoon after the vehicle spun off the road and flipped onto
its side when the driver lost control while traveling east on Sunrise
Highway in Westhampton in a snowstorm, according to New York State
Police.

State Troopers, who are responsible for patrolling
Sunrise Highway, said there were no children aboard the Montauk Bus
Services school bus during the accident, which occurred at around 1
p.m. and near the exit for County Road 31 in Westhampton.

New York State Trooper Richard Gant said the driver of the school bus,
identified only as a 62-year-old man from Mastic Beach, and a
68-year-old woman who assists the driver in taking care of children,
were the only two people aboard the vehicle at the time of the accident.

Pat Filbert, the head of the safety department for the Center
Moriches-based Montauk Bus Service, declined to say where the bus
driver was heading at the time of the accident, or which school
district the bus services.

“Everything our people were doing was safe—it was bad weather,” Ms Filbert said on Monday. “There’s nothing you can do except do your best when it turns to ice. The first few minutes of a snowstorm are tough.”

NEARLY $80million has been paid by the State Government’s insurer to repair damaged fleet vehicles over the past 2 years, and more than 700 were written off.

Public servants’ driving ability is under the spotlight with an average 26 claims a day from government agencies being made to the NSW Self Insurance Corporation, which falls under the control of Treasury.

Last financial year the insurer paid $32 million after 9613 claims for damaged cars, buses, trucks and other vehicles…. Full article on how much New South Wales is wasting here.

A majority of my readers here are US, so when they see this is an article related to GPS tracking equipment and public fleets in Australia they may just click on somewhere else.  That is, of course, just fine, but if you give a care about management, responsibility and protecting the public funds you might want to read the article anyway.

There’s very little difference in this story between what is going on in NSW and what is going on in most US states.

Huge fleets of vehicles drive millions of miles with very little oversight or supervision. Two years ago I was involved with a bid for a US state who not only had no control over their vehicles that they knew about, but had lost, that’s right, lost 700 of their cars and trucks.

Don’t worry, they are around here somewhere was the general attitude.

Did I get the contract for a GPS-based fleet management system that would have prevented this and saved them literally millions … after they had paid for the modest cost of the GPS tracking equipment?  No, I did not.  Reason?  We can’t implement a system like this, we have no money.

Ever stop to think that the reason you don’t have the money is because your fleet … and careless employees and slip=shod managers are eating your budget alive?  You do have the money, it’s a matter of management practice how you chose to spend it … wisely or wastefully.  It sucks to be a tax payer in New South Wales.  is it any better in your state?