Scramble on to check buses

Hillsborough parks 100 school buses, and Pinellas mechanics inspect brakes on Labor Day.

By MONIQUE FIELDS

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 5, 2000

Hillsborough County pulled 100 of its school buses from service, and Pinellas County mechanics spent much of Labor Day inspecting dozens more after an Ohio company warned of potential brake failure on school and transit buses nationwide.

The holiday scramble came after Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems warned that as many as 300,000 school buses, transit buses and large trucks are at risk of brake failure at speeds of 20 mph or lower because of a defect in an anti-lock brake system.

Hillsborough County school officials had recently bought 175 Thomas Built buses -- one of the manufacturers that use the brake system. Of those, 100 buses -- just a fraction of the county's 1,200-plus fleet -- were suspected of having the questionable brakes.

"We are not going to take any chances with the students who ride buses in Hillsborough County," said Mark Hart, a spokesman for Hillsborough County schools. "In the absence of better information, we just can't take any chances. We have to be sure."

Hillsborough will conduct its inspections today. In the meantime, the district will use surplus buses to take children to and from school until the brakes are declared safe or the district is given the all-clear by the manufacturer.

"Parents need not be concerned at all," Hart said. "We will keep those buses off the road until we can verify that they are safe."

In Pinellas County, school administrators called in a dozen mechanics Monday morning to inspect 67 Thomas Built buses that may be affected. They checked the buses, inspected wires and helped complete diagnostic tests on the anti-lock braking systems.

They didn't find any problems in Pinellas.

"We're doing a visual inspection of them," said Superintendent Howard Hinesley. "They don't see any reason to pull them, based on the information they've got and what they see."

If mechanics find something, they will pull the bus, he said.

"We would not in any way jeopardize anyone's safety. That's why we called people in today," he said.

Hinesley was hoping the mechanics wouldn't find any problems because many of the potentially affected buses have wheelchair lifts. Taking all of those buses out of commission might have caused a shortage, he said.

Bendix reported at least 40 incidents of brake failures nationwide since the problems surfaced in March. Of those, 16 involved school buses. The incidents involving school buses did not result in any accidents, and no one was injured.

The initial warning was issued by letter on Wednesday from Thomas Built, but school officials in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco county school districts haven't received any official word. They started the inspections after reading about the problem in the newspaper.

Elsewhere on Florida's west coast, school officials rushed to inspect the buses.

Eighty school buses in Sarasota County and 51 in Manatee County were identified as having brakes that are the subject of the nationwide alert.

School transportation workers in Sarasota County Monday fixed a faulty wire on the brakes of 80 buses. Workers in Manatee inspected brakes on the 51 buses and found them safe, though they expect to conduct similar repairs later this week.

Manatee and Sarasota officials asked drivers and mechanics to report to work through the weekend to test the braking systems in the buses, which represent about a fifth of their fleets.

Charlotte County officials say they conducted similar tests in July after learning that a recall was imminent. They say they have found only one bus with a faulty brake system and have pulled it out of service for further tests.

Early reports said 6,000 school buses may have defective brake systems and as many as 40,000 other buses may be affected nationwide. The defective brakes also were installed on 254,000 large trucks, including semitrailer trucks.

The school bus manufacturers identified are Blue Bird Corp., International Truck and Engine Corp. and Thomas Built Buses Inc., a unit of the Portland-based Freightliner Corp.

The problem was discovered by Bendix, which told Freightliner in June that a San Francisco school bus had experienced a "temporary loss of brake capability." The driver was able to bring the bus to a safe stop.

The defect may be in the electronic control unit of anti-lock braking systems manufactured since March 1998. Buses, as a result, can lose their breaking ability for about four seconds.

The brake system's electronic control units can "misinterpret" certain signals from the wheels, resulting in the temporary loss of braking capability "in one or more wheel positions," Thomas Built wrote in an Aug. 30 letter sent to hundreds of school districts nationwide.

The company said repair kits were being manufactured and would be shipped by November.

As two of the state's largest school districts took precautions, smaller districts weren't sure how to react.

"I saw a little blip about it in the paper -- and that's all I know about it," said Pasco County Superintendent John Long. If notified, he said, the district would act immediately.

But without proof, he was unsure whether Pasco's 300 buses had been affected. So on Monday he relied on past history. "Nobody notified us of a thing, and we haven't had any problems at all. We don't think we have any type of safety situation."

- Information from the Associated Press, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times was used in this report.

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