Everybody who's ever ridden a school bus has a school-bus story -- the driver who always nicked the curb going around corners, the rowdy kids in back, the lack of legroom in the odd seat over the wheel, the half-hour ride that became an hour when the new high school opened.
The school bus is a personal experience, a fact underscored by the things that the bus driver in Tuesday's fatal crash was able to tell State Patrol investigators. He knew where each kid usually sat, which ones needed to be dropped off at day care, even who might have stayed after school for math league -- ordinary life details that wouldn't have mattered nearly so much on a more- ordinary day.
I heard from a number of school-bus drivers this past week. They talked about the challenges of the job and the dangers they see all around them, from red-light runners to semi drivers who see nothing wrong with passing on a two-lane road in the snow.
Their work does not go entirely unnoticed. "I've seen what goes on in morning and evening school buses," wrote Susan Musial, a Twin Cities mom whose middle-schooler rides the bus twice a day. " 'Chaos in a can' would be a polite description; I'm nothing short of astonished at the power of concentration every bus driver must possess."
In big metro-area school districts, students switch schools more often, and driver turnover can be high, lessening the bond between passenger and driver.
It's a different story in rural areas like Cottonwood, Minn., where Tuesday's crash took place.
Ron Powers, a bus driver from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, read about the Minnesota crash on the Internet and wrote in to describe how he'd gotten to know kids during his years on the job:
For many drivers, the relationship begins with [a kid's] first day of kindergarten and ends with a kid/student's graduation 12 years later.
