Why America has a school bus driver shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#71

Post by effingwewt » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #25

rgbrenner wrote: post #15

"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to…

Waiting tables often have "split shifts".

Also, sending people home whenever they feel like it/are slow. Some places have made this illegal but it still happens all the time.

Try pulling that on the emlloywr though and see how quickly you are fired. The imbalances we put up with are maybe getting ironed out.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#72

Post by effingwewt » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 7:30 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #6

ghoward wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedu…

The solution is to recruit teachers to work as drivers.

Every teacher I've ever known on a personal level has been overworked and underpaid, and still had to go into their own pockets tl provide things for their class, from what I understand it's common practice at schools now to force costs to the teachers, or have them shunt it to the parents (have student bring X for class!) because we dont already pay for the schools with taxes, lunches, after school programs and electives, uniforms, bake sales, candy drives, etc.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#73

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #52

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. They already get paid more than Uber drivers. The problem is that "more" isn't enough right now, and there comes a point where the alternative is less expensive. > You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. There isn't a "caring" section on the CDL test. Why is the assumption that anyone without a CDL is some ki…

The assumption is that drivers that are paid more are more caring.

But why would that be the case? Maybe they need the job more because they can't just go make more money driving a big rig and are then less likely to jeopardize it by doing something wrong.

Plus, the driver of a smaller vehicle has fewer kids to care about, so the same amount of caring goes less diluted. If you get into a collision, the driver only has to take care of 8 kids instead of 40.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#74

Post by cmeacham98 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73

cmeacham98 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption is that drivers that are paid more are more caring.

But why would that be the case? Maybe they need the job more because they can't just go make more money driving a big rig and are then less likely to jeopardize it by doing something wrong. Plus, the driver of a smaller vehicle has fewer kids to care about, so the same amount of caring goes less diluted. If you get into a collision, the driver only has to take care of 8 kids instead of 40.

> But why would that be the case?

It's a pretty standard/common assumption that employees that are paid more are willing to take on more responsibility and care more about their job.

> Maybe they need the job more because they can't just go make more money driving a big rig and are then less likely to jeopardize it by doing something wrong.

This hypothetical is unsubstantiated, and I can easily flip the script: How do you know the non-CDL drivers need the job more when they can easily just go work for Uber, or at a Taxi company or similar?

> Plus, the driver of a smaller vehicle has fewer kids to care about, so the same amount of caring goes less diluted. If you get into a collision, the driver only has to take care of 8 kids instead of 40.

Presumably, more caring drivers (even if they have less "care per kid") will get into fewer accidents, which will be a magnitude of impact more than any actions taken after an accident ever could.