Wagga bus service Busabout has been called out by parents after it failed to notify them following an incident with a car on Monday morning. Photo: Busabout.
A parent has expressed frustration at not being notified that her son’s school bus was involved in an accident on Monday (24 February) on Tarcutta Street in Wagga.
Region was informed that at 8:30 am on Monday, an International Driver’s Licence holder allegedly pulled out of the Lawson Riverside Hotel and swiped the side of the passing Busabout vehicle that was transporting children to Wagga Public School.
While there were no major injuries to anyone on board, questions have been raised as to why family-owned Busabout didn’t notify parents or anyone at the school about the incident.
“Parents of Wagga should know when our children are involved in a school bus accident, Busabout don’t consider us entitled to know,” parent Bec Salmon said on a social media post.
“I picked up my son from school today at 3:25 pm to learn that his bus was involved in an accident on the way to school this morning.
“I called Busabout when we got home, who confirmed the accident occurred.
“The driver was taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries and all the kids were transferred to a new bus. They admitted that no schools and no parents were contacted.
“My son says he has a sore neck from the impact but Busabout said ‘Oh, but the school haven’t reported any injuries to students’, but the school didn’t even know there was an accident.
“Why are we only finding this out from our kids at the end of the day?”
Region contacted Wagga Wagga Public School, which confirmed it had not been notified of the incident.
Busabout consultant Karim Hussain said he acknowledged the mistake made by the company to not at least notify the school about the accident and said he would review its policies on incident reporting.
“We understand that children are precious cargo and we can understand why parents would be concerned by the lack of communication,” he said.
“We have the highest respect for all of our passengers in the travelling community and we take their safety very seriously.
“We’ve decided now to implement that policy on all incidents to make sure that everyone gets notified regardless of whether the incident is of a minor nature or a moderate nature or a serious nature.
“We’re going to follow the protocol going forward to make sure that we can deliver the highest standard to the community and particularly parents.
“We are consistently learning from every incident and improving our processes to improve what we can. We are now going to escalate all incidents to the highest level possible under our serious accident guidelines.”
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