On September 3rd, the second day of school, before 7:30 in the morning, some sixth-grade students who arrived early had already gathered at the gate of Foshan Middle School. The scheduled arrival time was 8:00, and students waited outside the school before then.
The tragedy happened quickly. The Dongping County Public Security Bureau of Shandong Province issued a notice stating that at 7:27 a.m. on September 3rd, a bus company’s vehicle transporting students, when passing the Dingzi intersection of Xuchang Road in Dongping County, lost control, resulting in the death of 11 people (6 parents and 5 students) and critical injuries to 1 person, with 12 people in stable condition.
Liu Ran, a graduate of Foshan Middle School, said that she recognized the vehicle involved in the accident from online videos as a customized bus used by the school’s students. Many students came from nearby towns, and the bus picked up and dropped off students along the way.
Customized buses are different from regular school buses. An industry insider in Beijing who is engaged in small vehicle customization services told The Paper that school bus services have strict regulations and requirements for vehicles and drivers. For example, school bus drivers must obtain school bus driving qualifications and have more than three years of driving experience, but there is currently no unified industry standard for drivers of customized campus buses.
“School Entry Time”
The place where the accident occurred, Foshan Middle School, is named after Baifo Mountain, which is located to the north of the county. On September 2nd, the WeChat public account of Foshan Middle School had previously published a welcoming article for the new semester, stating that to ensure that the children could enter school in an orderly manner, the school had formulated a comprehensive work plan, with multiple departments working together to prepare for the students before the start of school.
Picture released by the WeChat public account of Foshan Middle School in Dongping County on September 2nd.
Foshan Middle School is located at the intersection of Foshan Street and Xuchang Road. Liu Ran said that the school faces a Dingzi intersection, with the gate at the intersection, and a green belt separating the student walkways from the road.
Liu Ran’s younger brother is a sixth-grade freshman at Foshan Middle School. Her brother told her that around 7:30 a.m. on September 3rd, the older students were lining up to enter the school, and he had already arrived at the school gate and was walking to the front to see the class assignments when he suddenly heard a “bang” behind him. At first, he thought it was the sound of nearby blasting for mining, but when he looked back, he realized that a car accident had occurred. Later, he learned that two classmates in his class were injured in the accident.
Fan Junjie, a student from another middle school in Dongping County, recounted his mother’s memory to The Paper. On the morning of September 3rd, after his mother rode an electric bike to take him to school, she passed the gate of Foshan Middle School on her way home and saw the car suddenly rush into the crowd. It wasn’t 8:00 yet, and many students and parents were standing at the school gate waiting for it to open. Later, many people gathered around, and ambulances and police arrived quickly.
A staff member from the blood donation center in Dongping County told Jimu News that after the car accident, many citizens spontaneously went to the blood donation center to donate blood, and two blood donation vehicles were working.
Fan Junjie said that the middle school he attends in Dongping County opens its gates after 7:00 a.m. The school changed its long-standing rules because of this accident, “Originally, you couldn’t arrive early, but now if you arrive early, you can enter the classroom. The school opens half an hour earlier, just in case something happens outside.”
Xu Tingyu, who studies at the Experimental Middle School in Dongping County, said that the middle school she attends opens at 7:00 a.m., and students usually arrive at the school gate at 6:50 a.m., “It’s not okay to be early, and it’s not okay to be late.”
On April 2, 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the “Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Sleep for Primary and Secondary School Students,” which mentioned that provincial education administrative departments should, based on the need to ensure sufficient sleep for students, reasonably determine the school hours for primary and secondary schools in combination with the actual situation. The morning class time for primary schools is generally no earlier than 8:20, and for middle schools, it is generally no earlier than 8:00.
Schools in some provinces have since proposed “refusing to arrive early and ensuring safe dismissal.”
Liu Ran analyzed that the students involved in the accident at the gate of Foshan Middle School should mainly be elementary school students and sixth-grade freshmen because they enter school at 8:00, while students from the first to third grades of junior high school enter school at around 7:00.
Yang Bin is from Tai’an, and his friend’s child is in the second grade of junior high school at Foshan Middle School. As far as he knows, some schools in Dongping County have “road duty teams”: during school hours, students and parents take turns standing at the school gate to maintain order and protect the safety of students. That is to say, if students arrive early, they will line up at the gate to wait to enter the school, and the road duty team will maintain order.
The Paper reporter searched and found that in 2023, a senior student’s parent had posted a video of the “road duty team” of Foshan Middle School on a social platform, and the picture shows students lining up to enter the campus outside the school gate.
Who will regulate customized school buses
According to on-site videos and pictures, the vehicle involved is a bus with the words “Dongping County Dongyuan Public Transportation Co., Ltd.” and “Rated for 52 people” printed on the body.
Liu Ran recalled that when she was in school, this kind of school bus could drive directly to the gate of the student’s residential area. She said that customized buses are generally booked by schools with bus companies. Some local students also said that this type of customized bus can be contacted by parents who are not convenient to pick up and drop off their children.
An industry insider in Beijing who is engaged in small vehicle customization services told The Paper that school bus services have strict regulations and requirements for vehicles and drivers. For example, school bus drivers must obtain school bus driving qualifications and have more than three years of driving experience, but there is currently no industry standard for drivers of customized campus buses.
In the “Safety Technical Conditions for Dedicated School Buses” issued by the state in 2012, dedicated school buses are small vehicles specifically used to transport children or students, and are further divided into dedicated school buses for children, dedicated school buses for elementary school students, and dedicated school buses for middle school students; in addition, according to the “School Bus Safety Management Regulations” and other regulations, school bus drivers need to undergo special pre-job training, and those who have not obtained school bus driving qualifications are not allowed to drive school buses. In addition to vehicle operating agencies, schools also have special management responsibilities for school buses, prohibiting the use of vehicles that have not obtained school bus license plates to provide services.
The Paper reporter learned that there are only two bus companies in Dongping County, one is Tai’an City Transportation Group Dongping Branch, established in April 2003, and the other is Dongyuan Bus Company, established in March 2012. According to statistics as of 2023, the former company has 127 employees, while the latter has only 37 employees.
The public account of Dongyuan Bus introduces that “the company has given priority to the development of customized bus services in recent years, opening multiple customized bus routes for students in the county and rural areas, which has greatly alleviated the problem of traffic congestion when picking up and dropping off students, and ensured the safety of students arriving at school. At the same time, it promotes the customized bus services for commuting buses of various enterprises and institutions, and undertakes customized bus services such as family banquets and family car rentals all year round.”
A staff member of Tai’an Transportation Group introduced that this kind of customized bus service is equivalent to renting a car by calling yourself, and now bus companies have this service. For example, it is used for collective outings of school students, or for employees of companies to commute to and from work.
He said that local customized passenger transport services already have several routes to choose from, spanning urban and rural areas, with planned stops, and usually a single trip within the city costs at least 15 yuan. If you want to customize a route for chartering, the fee is generally more than 400 yuan; the drivers of their company are all trained bus drivers, and the buses on several customized routes also use the vehicles of the transportation company.
Tianyan Check App shows that Dongping County Dongyuan Public Transportation Co., Ltd. has a registered capital of 500,000 yuan, and its business scope includes road passenger transport station operation, school bus operation services, urban public transportation, etc., and is wholly-owned by Shandong Tai’an Shiyuan Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. Tai’an Shiyuan Agricultural was formerly known as Shandong Dongping Transportation Tourism Development Co., Ltd., established in September 2009. From the equity relationship chart, it can be seen that although the company is named an agricultural company, its related company businesses are all related to transportation, and also include two driver training institutions.
Equity relationship chart Tianyan Check
Since 2016, the company has been sued 5 times due to motor vehicle traffic accident liability disputes. In March of this year, the company’s business scope added school bus operation services.
As of the time of publication, the reporter was unable to contact the staff of Dongyuan Bus Company to respond to issues such as driver qualifications.
The aforementioned staff member of Tai’an Transportation also mentioned that if the school comes to their company to customize school buses, they usually use 12-seater or 15-seater yellow school buses, and the vehicles also need to be equipped with a patrol officer, who is also an employee of the Transportation Group.
After the accident, sanitation workers used water trucks to clean the ground, and the bus involved in the accident was towed away. As of now, the driver involved in the accident has been controlled by the public security organs, and the cause of the accident is under investigation.
(Yang Bin, Liu Ran, Xu Tingyu, and Fan Junjie are pseudonyms)
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