By Dave Millhouser

The sun was setting and before we drove through the night, it was time to reconfigure the two coaches.

We were hauling 75 hormone-soaked teenagers on a multi-day trek. Since it was impossible to monitor them in the darkened coaches, we cleverly put all the guys on one bus, and the girls on the other. Problem solved.

This was a few years ago, before competent air conditioning, so it was important to maintain good convoy discipline. Open windows meant we remained in single file because who knew what the kids were capable of doing if we ran side by side.

Things have changed (buses, not hormones), and its now possible to monitor all sorts of onboard activities, not just from the drivers seat but even on your office PC.

School bus and transit operators have, for some time, been using interior cameras that monitor behavior, as well as document passenger slips and falls that may (or may NOT) occur. These things are now available in infrared, and can run full time, be triggered by the driver, or even be monitored in real time on your office computer.

Some include a GPS function, so you know exactly where and when an event occurred, and you can search saved footage by date and location.

Several years ago a transit property had so many false claims that it staged a fake accident and arrested all the folks who claimed an injury. These machines can accomplish the same thing, without the drama.

Event recorders have been available for some time, and have grown increasingly sophisticated. These are the gizmos that continuously and simultaneously record a view of the driver and the road ahead. When an increase in G forces gets its attention, the camera saves a predetermined amount of the recording, before and after the event, and lights an LED on the machine.

This can be a two-edged sword, depending on who goofed, but you do know what really happened. If a driver completes a trip without irritating the camera, no record is saved. No news is good news, and avoiding the dreaded LED tattletale becomes a training aid.

Some models allow you to download directly to your office computer. Others transmit the recording of the event to the manufacturers site, where their folks interpret the data and notify you.

Many operators now use a GPS setup to keep track of where the buses are, and some of these are tied into databases that alert the driver that a low clearance is near. Some double-deck coaches have a camera in the upper passenger compartment that allows the driver to monitor whats happening above.

Any new technology offers both advantages, and pitfalls. Over the years lots of options have been introduced. Some became standards, while others faded because they were either impractical or didnt REALLY do what we hoped. Think about that when youre deciding what to try.

Many of these systems have security implications, so there may be grants available.

Interior monitors (and even options like WiFi) may offer some privacy concerns. Your staff needs to understand and respect that. You dont want to see your passengers acting frisky on the internet.

Choose your suppliers with care, make sure they offer support and training, and that they will be around as long as you own their system. This is particularly critical if youre dependant on them for handling your data. Think about the headache of combining a scatterbrained driver and an obsolete low-clearance database.

Make sure the equipment is compatible with your coach, and see if it is portable, so you can transfer it when you replace coaches.

Train your folks. They need to understand how these things work to get the most benefit, and to prevent aforementioned headaches. Drivers who know how event recorders work try to avoid incidents that trigger them, and passengers whove been informed about interior monitors tend to behave.

These systems are tools, and only as good as your people. They should be used but never entirely trusted. GPS has been known to goof, and sometimes theres a new low bridge your database didnt know about. The driver has got to look out the windshield.

In ye olden days, when overhead package racks were bigger (and I was smaller), the ultimate, organic monitor was the relief driver. We used to sleep in the racks when we were off duty, and on occasion passengers would forget we were up there. From time to time we were treated to some interesting sights, sounds and the smell of controlled substances burning.

Dave Millhouser is a bus industry marketing consultant and freelance writer. Contact him at: dave_millhouser@hotmail.com.