Take the example of Los Gatos, Calif., located southwest of San Jose. The Valley Transportation Authority earlier this summer canceled one of its major routes that bused high school students from the nearby foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, prompting many parents to form carpools. At least one parent told the Los Gatos Weekly Times this week that she was concerned about many teens making the drive alone or with siblings.

"I have a 17-year-old, and I don't want him driving every day on Highway 17," said Nancy Maynard-Herr. "There were two accidents last week on Summit Road involving teens. Three or four weeks ago, there was an accident involving a teen who was texting."

Mountainous driving, as many school transporters know, can be dangerous enough for school buses much less 17- and 18-year-old kids. The article points out that teens under the age of 18 and with provisional licenses are prohibited from driving anyone under the age of 20 unless a parent or guardian is with them. But, a lack of transportation options or the need to transport a family member can make exceptions to the rule.

Teen drivers are not safe, especially when they're tired. The Transportation Research Board found in its 2002 study “The Relative Risks of School Travel" that children driving to school or riding with other teenage drivers are 44 times more likely to be fatally injured than in a school bus. A recent study by Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., found that there here were 65.4 automobile crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers during the morning school commute in Virginia Beach. Meanwhile, . In the adjacent town of Chesapeake, there were 46.2 crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers in nearby Chesapeake, which starts high school an hour and 20 minutes later at 8:40 a.m.

Even when parents are driving, TRB found that children are 13 times more at risk than in school buses. Yet, this is all too often lost on the public. Despite a proposal from a nearby school district to run a morning bus route into town, not enough Los Gators parents signed up for the service.

As readers will recall, the Obama Administration effectively took ownership of the auto maker last year in a bailout tied to the recession. In effect, taxpayers already "own" GM, but today's announcement signaled that actual shares in the overhauled company could begin as soon as this fall. However, a company statement indicated that the date the IPOs will be offered "will be determined by market conditions and other factors."

News station KSDK in Rolla, Mo., spoke with two girls who suffered serious injuries when one school bus carrying high school band members from St. James High School to an outing at the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park crashed into another school bus in its convoy.

Dani Klein was seated next to Jessica Brinker, the 15-year-old high school student who died in the crash. Klein suffered broken vertebrae and a fractured skull, but told KSDK her injuries could have been far worse if Brinker hadn't shoved Klein out of her bus seat just before the second school bus rear-ended them.

Initial reports from the accident investigation undertaken by the Missouri Highway Patrol indicated that the initial crash of the first school bus, which struck a pickup truck, ran it over and then mounted a semi-truck cab, was caused by inattention of the school bus driver for failing to notice that traffic was slowing down. Then, the second school bus driver, who reports say was following too closely, hit the rear of the first bus.

Klein recalled that the students were "tossed around" during the first crash between their school bus, the pickup truck and the semi cab.

Emily Perona was also riding on Klein's and Brinker's school bus. When the second bus struck, she was pinned between school bus seats and her pelvis was crushed. A photo on the KSDK Web site showed a frail looking Perona in a wheelchair with two leg braces and a neck brace. But, the news station added, doctors were "impressed with her recovery so far." Perona is expected to remain in the hospital for at least another month.

Perona also thanked one of her rescuers, "Ty," a motorist also on his way to Six Flags who stopped after the crash and stayed with Perona until emergency personnel arrived on scene.

"I guess it's such shock that I can't remember everything. But I do remember the guy Ty jumping onto the bus and staying with me. Talking me through it. Telling me I was going to be okay," she added.

The construction of the yellow school bus, which is subject to some three dozen Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, is more stringent than any other vehicle on the road. Those are reasons enough why school buses are also the safest mode of highway transportation there is and the absolute safest way for kids to get to and from school. But are you ready and to explain that fact to not only parents but local media during this back-to-school news cycle?

Despite the very low numbers of student fatalities each year inside the school bus, school bus drivers average three times fewer number of training hours than do their counterparts behind the wheel of municipal transit buses. Thats 35 hours of training a year for school bus drivers versus the federal requirement of 114 hours for transit agency employees. But that comparison pales next to what Greyhound requires of their drivers, 200 hours, or next to interstate trucking requirements, 250 hours.

The reason school buses remain so safe, again, is due to the fact they are built like tanks, as most everyone in the industry knows. School buses also travel at much lower speeds than other vehicles, they are equipped with high-back, padded seats and the industry strictly self-regulates itself when it comes to driver background checks.

So you can guess how I responded: I picked up my dictionary and flipped the pages the letter "S."

Merriam Webster defines safety as "the condition of being safe from undergoing or causing hurt, injury, or loss." Certainly school bus construction plays a factor in helping school districts reduce risk and make school bus transportation the safest mode of travel there is. Certainly, too, the many safety devices in and around school buses also contribute to this end. So perhaps it would help to look up the word "risk," which M-W also tells us is the "possibility of loss or injury : peril" and "someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard."

Let's now turn our attention to last week's fatal school bus crash in Missouri. While a final crash investigation by the Missouri Highway Patrol and NTSB is not expected for at least another month, preliminary reports indicate that the crash was the fault of both school bus drivers. The first bus that struck a pick-up truck and killed its 19-year-old driver was apparently caused by driver inattention after a semi-truck cab slowed for traffic. Then, another school bus driver allegedly was following too closely behind the first school bus. The result was the second bus smacked into the right rear of the first bus, killing a 15-year-old girl in the process.

School bus drivers are obviously human and prone to error. But, in the same breath, the industry can't simply rest on its laurels and say that tragic events like the Missouri crash are an unfortunate fact of life. Yes, the school bus is the safest vehicle on the road today, and the vast, vast majority of school bus drivers are the absolute safest people on the road. But last week's crash should serve as a reminder that there can always be lessons taught when there is the loss of human life. Dwell on that when risk-reducing behavior is being taught this summer.

In some of these television spots, the script calls for kids boarding, riding or exiting a school bus as parents, sometimes frantically, chase after the kids with a forgotten lunch pail or some other necessary item. The message is clear: parents must get with it to buy, buy, buy to get their kids prepared for the school year ahead.

If we didn't know better, we would say the advertising agencies seemingly "get it." Regardless of the reasons why (see revenue), they recognize the need to have school buses in nearly every frame of the commercials they create for their clients. See one of them here.

Of course, reality also dictates that school buses are merely a prop in these commercials. The vehicles, after all, have become as synonymous with school as the old red school house of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then there was the red apple on the teacher's desk.

Yet, it's interesting once we turn our attention back to reality that school bus routes nationwide continue to be cut. But obviously a large number of people nationwide, especially parents — and advertisers — equate the school bus with learning or at least getting kids to and from school. And that includes frequent sightings of the school bus, like this one in a recent Kansas City Star newspaper article, when talking about preparing kids for school in the first place.

As pupil transporters begin busing kids again in full force, or prepare to, it will be interesting to see if any discussion abounds this week at the annual American School Bus Council summit here in Chicago about how the industry might piggy-back on this national albeit commercial message.