Most school disctricts have a policy that when students are misbehaving, then the bus needs to be pulled over. There are no special clauses for when a driver is at their wits end. The driver endangered children and should be fired.

I can completely understand her frustration, but you just can't risk kids' safety like that....especially these days when parents sue for looking at their kids the wrong way.

However, when kids are unruly on the schoolbus, out of their seats, running around, they are at SERIOUS risk of REALLY getting injured if the driver had to stop unexpectedly or got in an accident, so maybe she was trying to get them to understand what could happen.

I used to do that to my kids when they didn't wear their seatbelts. Leave the driveway, go halfway down the street and hit the brakes. They got a quick taste of what could happen and you could hear a chorus of "clicks" coming from the back seat.

Bottom line is that parents want the schools to teach their children, but allow them no authority to discipline them. Kids are very smart and are very aware of boundaries and have NO problem pushing the limits of what they know they can get away with.

According to the picture shown I think the driver did over react and needs a wakeup call to deal with these types of situations. Her first concern should be the safety of the children which to me look very small and harmless. If they were older maybe that type of behavior would have been appropiate ,because she has to take into consideration her safety also,so that would take a different type of disipline. I'm sure the schools have rules of how to maintain a group of kids on their bus. If not maybe they should in with their driving classes before they put the kids in their care.

There is a great South Park episode that dives into the problem with todays ADD and ADHD youths citing all the children were on ritalin and unruly and upset about how quickly doctors prescribe drugs to make it all better, So Chef just said it's kids just being kids, and came up with his own medicine to combat today's out of control youths...it was called Rital-Out, which was just a Backhand slap to the head (HARD)
and guess what? It worked.
Problem is many parents do NOT discipline their children and do not teach manners, which put's people like this buss driver in a compromised position and at wits end. Have you ever tried to gain control over even 10 loud children, .. very frustrating... The children are no longer fearful of adults and feel that they can and do get away with everything, and many no longer show PROPER respect to elders.. So it starts at home, spare the rod...spoil the child. I say give the drivers the opportunity to discipline these children properly. Maybe we should bring back the dunce cap.

if a driver pulled over every time the kids got too unruly, some buses wouldn't make it halfway to the first bus stop.....you have no idea!

Get Real. This is only getting worse. Blame the parents! There is no respect for anyone anymore. I drive and I don't puit up with their crap. A lot of other drivers lives a hell. They get minimum wage and have to comply with all regulations. Rules that are in place for a reason. These kids push the limit. It is bad when a 5th grade girl calls the bus driver a MFer one day and the next the High School student tells the driver what's your name MFer. The principal would not even come out to the bus until the driver left it set for 15 min. Bottom line nothibg was done. This is in a supposedly a rural school district. Yeah! The whole system is breaking down. I run for a big bus company that serves rural and city schools and it is the same everywhere. Yes she was wrong in what she did, but I see it all the time, people loose it with all of the abuse. Even with the cameras the parent do not want to admit their angels do what they do. In the old days the drivers used to put them off the bus if they did not behave, now they would lock you up and throw away the keys. Wake up people and try to be responsable, be proactive not reactive. You reap what you sow and sooner or later you will bear the rotten fruit you raise. Proud American and Veteran driving the bus to help out at the school after my job was shipped overseas!

Miss Bonnie, although your method sounds wonderful, this is the real world and children today are out of control, parents are afraid of their kids and most kids today are brats. Years ago we all had nothing and we were all happy, the kids today get EVERYTHING and they are all miserable little beasts. Your actually not a bus driver, are you? Because if you were, you would know that "talking" to these little brats has NO effect, and their parents would run you in for even suggesting that "their" kid misbehaved.

LET THE KIDS BEHAVE OR WALK>>>>>>>> AND WHY DID THEY FALL ???? WHY NOT ARREST THE LAWMAKERS AND SCHOOL BOARDS FOR NOT HAVING SEAT BELTS IN ALL BUS'ES . PARENTS WOULD BE ARRESTED FOR THIS IN THEIR OWN CARS................WHY WHY WHY ????????

a bus driver should never put children in danger like this. when i was a child i had a bus driver who was a complete witch who would pull the bus over and yell and scream making us a half hour or more late home. one day she grabbed and struck my neighbors son. needless to say my mom went up to the prinicipal the following day and told him what was going on and that if he got a report that someone beat her up it was her. she was transferred shortly thereafter. it seems to be a common theme amongst them. my neighbor told me how her son who had just started kindergarten was forced to stand in the aisle w/ others because there were no seats. where is the training for these people? and why arent they fired? i know when my children are school age i will be driving them to school.

Do you even know what methods the bus driver used before she used the 'break check' method? I recently had to deal with a driver who was a substitute for the regular driver and I had to pick up my child at the school. I found it irritating because several kids were standing up durring the bus ride and her repeated verbal warnings and repremands were falling on deaf ears. She stop the bus before the first student was dropped off and returned back to the school. She didn't feel she could do more strict or severe methods because she felt she would lose her job. As it is she or the second driver the showed up to help with the situation may get fired because of the way things were handled at the school parking lot. I feel parents need to be more accountable for the actions of their children and those parents of the kids who truly started the unsafe action should be the ones rideing the bus with their miscreant children.

You are totally right. I am only a kid but my school has already fired our 1st bus driver. He threatened us by saying, "This is it!" I'm not sure what he was trying to say but i got off at the 1st stop which was on the other side of the neighborhood. If all he did was pull over and talked calmly he wouldnt have gotten fired. We recorded the man screaming at us and the boy who recorded it showed it to the principal and the principal showed it to the mayor (i think). Please respond to this cause i wan to know your share of this story. There is much more but i would be gladly to share it with you in another comment. By the way i am 12 years old.

Bonnie, what planet are YOU living on?! You could stop the bus ALL DAY here in Florida and nothing would change. Place the kids that are the problem in the front of the bus here and you have them later coming up behind you knocking the crap out of you. Reason with them, again, WHAT PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON!? Not in today's society deary! Maybe in your little small town with a total of 10 kids on the bus, but not in most places! There is NOTHING wrong with what this bus driver did and nothing new. We had one back in the day when I was on the bus. If you took your sweet time coming to the bus in the morning and you weren't at the bus stop, she left you or made you chase the bus while she continued to drive it. Of course she was black, too and got away with it. Not like a WHITE person would. The problem is is that these kids need a good ASS whippin in school like they used to get! Send them to the principal now, BIG DEAL! So they might have someone *talk* to them or get a detention. Like they CARE?! Beat the crap out of them and their lousy parents!

I had a bus driver do exactly this in middle school. I went forward at the same speed the bus was traveling. My body was stopped by the seat in front of me, but my head kept moving. I hurt my neck bad. The pain only lasted an hour or two, but I was too busy trying hard to make sure the other kids didnt see me cry because that would make things worse. I didnt even tell my mom of the incident until I was an adult. As a kid I was told never to question adults. They knew better than I.

Other punishments included taking the route the opposite way making me an hour late. What if I had an after school appointment I needed to be at? One punishment the driver dropped misbehaving boys off at the front of our neighborhood (long walk) When I tried to get off, being a good girl, the driver told me shed dropped me off at my house after she dropped other children off. That means I would have to wait another 30minutes!!! So I walk home instead. Id rather spend 30minutes outside than on that death trap

Once a boy threw a tennis ball at the windshield. The driver drove all the way to another town, then back to the school. Being a sub driver, we all thought we were being taken hostage. After an hour had passed, and we still hadnt left the school many of us got off and found other rides. I had to walk to my friends house and ask her mother to drive me home since my mom could not be reach and father was out of state!

Whats worse is almost all of the problems the driver had was with neighborhood boys. So everything the driver did punished EVERYONE not just them. They should of been given office referrals or banned from riding (some even slashed up seats and set fire to them!!! (BTW this was upper middle class suburbia!) Though I think the bus driver is responsible for disciplining them, their parents should of spanked them once or twice in their life. They had absolutely no fear of getting into trouble!

After the neck issue I started questioning why there were no seat belts on school buses. Had I been wearing one I would not have gotten hurt. Once, riding in the very rear, a driver hide a curb and I flew up and landed on the floor with my legs crossed! I couldnt get up! I had to roll around and pull myself up!!! Had I been wearing a seat belt, that would have not happen. I say provide them, and rather than harass the driver to make sure everyones buckled and stay buckled, just give students the choice of wearing one or not.

I completely understand why no one ever rides the bus anymore, and why the streets are littered with parked SUVs miles from the school.

She would just bye all the kids candy, Big NO ! NO ! that's not even be the perfect bus driver just paying to keep the kids from complaining, you know thats a ( hipo-crit ) That driver even broke the camara on the bus so good luck everyone ...

Bus Drivers don't have any protection against kids. I am a bus driver and in 5 years have not even wrote a child up. I have learned to get there respect right off the bat every year and be there friend not someone who yells at them all the time. If you want to really get upset go watch the video on you tube " School Bus Beating in Kalamazoo Michigan"- It would be great to have a aide on every bus but that will never happen. Parents need to teach the kids respect for everyone --- things need to go back to the 60's --- I was spanked and it wasn't child abuse --- I'm glad I did. Kids are getting away with way to much --- Believe me it'll make them a much better person if you start it early.

I agree, and disagree with Mike.We don't really know what happened. This driver might have only tapped the brakes to wake them up. There may not have been any real danger to anyone by what the driver did. There were no injurys. I'm can't judge that. I do know that I spanked my children, and punished them with other methods as needed. That doesn't mean I beat them or put them at risk. But they did feel the discomfort of the disipline. If parents do not want their children disiplined, at school then they need to make sure they disipline them at home, to insure they behave when out in public. Some schools don't take a drivers positions seriously. They ignore the drivers requests for help with unruly students, putting others at greater risk, than anything this driver did. Until you have had 50 screaming unruly kids behind you, and a principle that says nicely, to disipline them, "Oh don't do that again" and that's the end of it. You have no idea what you are talking about. You may think you do, but you don't. So don't be too quick to judge what you don't know about. Not all kids are like yours are. And going down the road trying to deal with the genius drivers now a days is a challenge, in itself. It's a whole different deal, in a 40 foot bus with a group of crazy kids. Try it then get backto me.

The younger kids a much easier to deal with, but hight school school age are darn near dangerous. We had a bus driver in my area injured pretty badly by being hit in the back of the head with a soda bottle while driving a school bus. Some of these kids act like animals.

Your use of the word "bum" makes me wonder if you live somewhere other than the United States. If so, are the seatbelt and/or carseat laws the same where you live as in the U.S.?
Breaking sharply, even with proper seatbelt/car seat use is not a good idea. Chances are, if a child or children is/are causing such a ruckuss the parent feels break-slamming to be warranted, a properly restrained child could still be injured. What about the vehicles behind and/or beside the break-slammer?
I have a crazy idea: instead of slamming on the breaks,pull over into the next parking lot, rest stop, or emergency stopping lane.