Safety

"We feel that we do just a little bit more than just drive kids to and from school." - Harold Keyser

"Many times you get up at 3 in the morning looking out the window and checking the roads. We always worry." - Bob Beach

In a March 1980 Missoulian profile of Bob Beach and Harold Keyser, reporter Mea Andrews wrote that since Ray Beach had launched his transportation business in 1941, there had been no deaths and no serious injuries on a Beach school bus. She was right, and the company's spotless safety record still stands.

Andrews also pointed out the Beach motto: "Try to run on time, but never sacrifice safety."

She reported that Beach Transportation was so widely known for its safety record that it was featured in The Fatal Stop, a California produced training film for bus operators and school personnel.

"I'm proud of that record, "Bob Beach told Andrews. He added, "The whole key to a successful operation is the personnel - and we have the best. I think we've got the best drivers in the business."

Keyser thought so too, "We feel - and so do a lot of other people - that Beach Transportation has the Number One bus business in the state. That's not only in over-the-road coaches, but in school buses, as well. We even had a travel company in Kansas City tell us that our drivers and buses were the best that they had used from all over the United States."

Keyser attributes Beach Transportation's "uncanny" safety record and excellent reputation to pride, "Once you're proclaimed as being the best, you go to no ends to make sure you stay the best. Our record and our service are second to none."

Missoula insurance agent Tom Grady, whose compan has been writing liability insurance for Beach Transportation for 45 years, confirmed Keyser's statement, "The precedent that that company has set in terms of safety and avoiding accidents is unparralled in the Northwest ... Other bus companies are just not in the same league as Beach when it comes to safety programs and bus maintenance."

Beach and Keyser point out that the only casualties in the company's 45 years of operation have been two chipped teeth. Keyser, who accepts responsibility for one of those, described the circumstances, "Back in the early days, I was hauling band and orchestra students. This one little girl from Russell School continually would stand up. She stood up all the time, and I'd say, "Please sit down. If I have to put on the brakes, you're going to fall down and hurt yourself." It was just impossible to get her to sit down. One day I was driving the kids home, and I had to put on the brakes. I probably put them on with a little more pressure than I had to ... The girl, as usual, was standing, and when I put on my brakes, she fell forward. The seats weren't padded on the back like they are now, and she bumped her teeth on that steel bar across the top of the seat. I didn't know she had chipped a tooth until several days later ..." Other mishaps, according to Keyser, usually involved students slipping as they stepped off buses onto ice in the wintertime.

On the night of December 14, 1962, a Missoula man, Ole Stenseth, was killed when the station wagon he was driving rammed the rear end of a Beach school bus about a mile west of town on US Highway 10-93. Driven by Keyser and carrying the Missoula County High School freshman basketball team home from Dixon, the bus had slowed for a railroad crossing and was about a length away from being stopped when it was hit. Stenseth, according to investigating officers, was traveling at a high rate of speed and failed to brake for the lawfully decelerating bus until it was too late. Keyser was absolved of any blame.

Years later, in reminiscing about the accident, Keyser commented, "Fortunately, nothing that I did caused it. But, no matter how innocent you are, you still feel terribly bad. If it hadn't been for a couple of patrolmen and Bob, I would have very seriously considered not driving any more. It shook me up pretty bad, but a highway patrolman and the sheriff as much as made me get back in another bus and drive those kids on home ... It took a while before I got over that ... "

Beach Transportation's safety record has been recognized many times. For instance, in 1967, 1973, and again in 1978, the National School Bus Drivers Contractors Association presented the company with awards for its overall program. Specifically cited were safety, training of drivers, driving records and rapport with school districts served. In 1974, Keyser who had racked up almost a million miles of safe driving, was recognized by the Montana School Bus Drivers Association. And in 1979, the National School Transportaion Association presented Beach Transportation with a Golden Merit Award for excellence of service, safety programs and outstatnding community responsibility. Presenting it to Beach at the association's national convention in Duluth, Minnesota, was Tom Browkaw, former host of NBC's "Today" Show and now a network news anchorman.

Beach Transportation received other forms of praise through the years. For instance, two Beach bus drivers who were inadvertantly involved in a multi-vehicle collision in fog on Lolo Grade in January 1977 were lauded by officials for their calm action during and immediately after the accident. Acting Rural Fire Chief B.B. Sayles wrote Beach that when energency pesonnel reponded to the accident, they expected to find "mass hysteria and chaos" at the scene. "Rather," he continued, "we found a busload of responsible, well-disciplined young gpeople and a bus driver who was fully in command of the entire situation. It was a real pleasure to see a man of that caliber who maintained his cool, and I'm sure, grasped the seriousness of the situation ... I think that the actions of both these men (bus drivers Paul Simmons and Mike Pahl) and their quick thinking perhaps averted a disaster."

During the winter of 1982, dozens of Beach school bus drivers had still another opportunity to test their skills under highly adverse conditions. Confronted by massive snow drifts, zero visibility, high winds and streets partially blocked by stalled cars and downed trees, they safely transported Missoula studens through the worst part of what one driver, Dick Schipporeit, called "the hardest blizzard I've ever seen in this city."

What's behind Beach's record - a record wherein thousands of School District 1, Missoula County High School, DeSnet, Woodman, Bonner and Target Range students have been safely transported over a 4 1/2-decade period?

Beach noted in 1982, that part of his company's success has to do with "choosing drivers who are responsible and teaching them not only how to drive safely, but how to handle unruly riders and how to mkae sure the bus is safe to drive." He added that, " you just don't pick up anybody off the street and do the job." He explained that a potential driver's traffic record is checked and said that a driver must have taken first aid, had to pass a medical and exam, and had to be a stable citizen. For example, driving school buses for Beach in 1982 were four retired police officers, a minister, four retired military persona, about 25 univeristy students and several housewives.

In Keyser's opinion, two factors help make good school bus drivers, "You've got drivers who are excellent behind the wheel and extremely poor with kids, and you've gto drivers who are poor behind the wheel, but excellent with kids. To make a good, all-around driver, you've got to have somebody who has a real good rapport with kids and who, at the same time, is a natural behind the wheel."

Keyser relies heavily on his first impression of a potential driver, "If a person comes in here who's neat, clean, and polite, he has a good chance of becoming a bus driver, if we need him. I'm a stickler on appearances ..."

Have many Beach drivers been fired through the years?

"Not many," Keyser said. "The biggest thing that gets people fired is showing up late to work too many times after they've been warned. In the wintertime, you've got 40 kids out there waiting in the bitter cold. We expect our drivers to show up at pickup points on the same tick of the clock every morning. If they leave headquarters 5, 10 or 15 minutes late, that means a kid is going to have to wait longer at the bus stop ... We screen out people well enough that we usually don't have that problem."

Other factors figure into the Beach safety record. For example:

• Drivers traditionally must make a personal appearance in the office before leaving to pick up students.
• Drivers must check brakes, turn signals, lights, flashers and other mechanical functions before they leave on a route.
• School buses are serviced every 2,000 miles. Each bus has a two-way radio so that drivers and dispatchers are in constant touch.

In addition, since the late 1970s, the Department of Transportation has required school bus drivers to have high-back seats, interior roll-over reinforcements, layer brakes and enclosed fuel tanks. Said Beach in 1982, "The new requirements have made the buses twice as expensive as in the past."

Another expensive addition to the Beach school bus fleet was a four-wheel-drive uit that serves the remote Rodeo Ranchettes residential area in upper Miller Creek during winterime. Specially made, the bus, according to Beach, has proved useful many times in deep snow and has pulled out other buses. Safety dividends, Beach said, have been worth the bus' cost.

Historically, the worst safety problem Beach drivers have had is with other motorists. When children are being loaded or unloaded, red lights on the bus flash. Motorists are supposed to stop - whether following the bus or coming from the opposite direction. Sometimes, though, cars don't stop, and pass the bus on both the left and right sides. Several times, law-breaking motorists have almost hit children.

In feature stories dating back to May 1954, the Missoulian newspaper was reporting the problem to its readers. In one story, veteran Missoulian writer John Forssen commented that "it is a source of wonder to school bus drivers and others concerned with the busing program that no child has been killed or even hurt in recent years." Calling the violations of motorists "flagrant," Forssen wrote that "every school bus driver can tell hair-rasing stores of narrow escapes he has witnessed."

Forssen noted that a few years prior to 1954, some Missoula school bus drivers became annoyed at motorists - particularly truck drivers - who failed to stop for loading and unloading. The drivers signed complaints and subsequent violators were fined. Not long afterward, somebody discovered that the city of Missoula had no ordinance requiring motorists to stop for school buses. The drivers who had been fined were given their money back. Later, state law prohibited vehicles from passing school buses while they were loading or unloading. Like other traffic laws, the school bus law couldn't be strictly enforced because available highway patrolment couldn't be everywhere at once,

Ray Beach commented in 1954 about the dangerous problem, "I don't know why people ignore the stop signs and the lights. They must be thoughtless or careless. It's a miracle some child hasn't been hurt."

Bob Beach believes that a bus driver's rapport with young passengers also affects bus safety. Through the years, Beach drivers have been told to be firm with youngsters at the beginning of the school year and to stay that way. If drivers are too friendly, Beach contends, kids will take advantage of them. Students, he pointed out, are required to be seated, to be quiet at railroad crossings, and to keep conversation at a normal pitch.

Beach drivers always have been encourged to speak to students as the students get off the bus. For some children, Beach pointed out, a friendly "Good morning" is the first cheerful comment they hear each day.

Beach once told an interviewer that he thought his company's excellent rapport with school districts was because he, Keyser and their crew tried to do more than was required. He added, "We like what we do." A statement that has never been questioned.

This story has been excerpted and liberally edited from Second to None: the story of Beach Transportation Co. and its buses written by former newspaperman Steve Smith and published for Beach Transportation by Pictoral Histories Publishing Company in 1986.