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Kansas Highway Patrol Begins School Bus Inspections

Larry Darling, flickr Creative Commons

The Kansas Highway Patrol is making the rounds in school districts across the state, inspecting school buses and other vehicles that transport students.

Troopers began their vehicle inspections this week and will continue through the first days of school in August.

The goal is to make sure every bus and school vehicle will load, transport and unload students safely. Lt. Adam Winters says troopers check for defects in equipment and mechanical conditions.

"Troopers are out checking a few things that are relative to the buses such as lights, emergency exits, tires, windshield wipers, fire extinguishers, first aid kits and emergency spill kits among other things," he says.

Winters says if a vehicle doesn’t pass inspection, it cannot be used to transport students until all defects are corrected and a trooper does a re-check.

Last year, nearly 11,000 buses and other school vehicles were inspected.

The program is a joint effort between the Kansas Highway Patrol and the Kansas State Department of Education.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.