School board member on speeding school buses report: ‘That is outrageous’

RICHMOND, Va. -- Richmond School Board members Kim Gray and Dawson Boyer said aCBS 6 investigationthat uncovered speeding school buses will be coming up at their board meeting next Monday, and they expect to receive a full report about the data we uncovered.

"That's just staggering," Boyer, who represents the first district, said when we showed him the data.

Boyer and Gray, who represents the second district, said they were surprised when we aired an investigation Tuesday night about Richmond school buses speeding hundreds of times.

"That is outrageous...that would be considered reckless driving," Gray said.

Both said they were unaware the GPS systems embedded in the buses send alerts to the school system every time a bus goes 10 miles per hour over the speed limit for at least 30 seconds.

"I was unaware we had the ability to track the speed of our drivers," Gray said.

"This is all new news to me," Boyer said.

Our investigation uncovered a little over two months worth of those alerts, which showed buses repeatedly going 10, 15, even more than 20 miles per hour over the speed limit.

Tommy Kranz with the school system said the technology is so new the school system has not had the chance to dig deep into the speeding data being collected.

That means drivers found to be speeding by the GPS have not been disciplined.
Still, Gray and Boyer said the system is privileged to have the safety tool, and they plan to ensure it will be used to its full potential in the future.

"We need to make sure we have accountability measures in place, and we did have this measure in place, but we weren't familiar with it," Boyer said.

Spokesmen for Chesterfield and Henrico schools both said they have GPS systems on their buses respectively, but those GPS's are not equipped to send speeding alerts.

Kranz said he is working to make sure the GPS systems are accurately tracking bus speeds.