WRONG BUS WARNING
When loading student's on your bus, there are times when certain student's tagging on triggers a loud, jarring 'WRONG BUS' warning. They are a crucial feature in SMART tags's goal to increase student safety, and hopefully to make your job as a bus driver easier. These warnings bring to your attention students who who may not belong on your bus.
Let's look at the root causes of these warnings, and go over what you as a driver should do when you see these them:
Let's backup and take a quick look at how SMART tag gets all of the student information onto your tablet.
- Your transportation department uses routing software to place students at specific geolocations. Each of these geolocations should match up with an existing stop on an existing route.
- Every day at a scheduled time, any changes to routing information are sent to your driver tablet.
HOW SMART TAG GETS BUS AND STOP INFO
When you load students in the afternoon, you MIGHT get a WRONG BUS warning for a student who you are certain should be on your bus. If you've confirmed over the radio that the student should indeed get off at a stop on your route, here is what might be causing this warning:
NEW STUDENTS
When new students are added to your route, there can sometimes be a delay of (1) day or more for the data to send to your tablet correctly.
DATA DID NOT UPDATE
Its always possible that the data did not send correctly from the routing software into SMART tag.
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START OF SCHOOL YEAR
As a driver, you may also get more 'Wrong Bus' warnings towards the beginning of school as your routers continue to make changes to routes and shuffle students around.
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STUDENT NEEDS TO BE ON DIFFERENT BUS
There are times when the student does NOT belong on your bus, and instead you'll need to direct him/her to the correct bus.
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Let's see how this works
Any time a student loads your bus and they are NOT on your SMART tag's roster, you will get a WRONG BUS warning.
HERE"S HOW TO HANDLE WRONG BUS WARNINGS..
WRONG BUS CRITERIA:
OUTBOUND ROUTE (school to home)
INBOUND ROUTE (home to school)
You will only get a WRONG BUS warning when you are picking up a student who does not attend school at the assigned campus for your route.
DIRECT STUDENT TO DIFFERENT BUS
This example is an inbound route (headed to school). The WRONG BUS warning is shown as the student tries to tag on. Because this student needs to go to a campus that is NOT assigned to this route, driver will probably want to direct the student to BUS: 444, as shown here.
STUDENT NOT ASSIGNED TO ANY ROUTES
This example is during an outbound (school to home) route. This student boarded the bus, and the WRONG BUS warning is showing.
Sometimes, a WRONG BUS warning will show the students Bus Number so you can direct them where to go. In this case, there is no information showing. All we see is 'BUS: UNKNOWN'. The reason? This student has NOT been assigned to ANY outbound routes.
NO BUS NUMBER LISTED
It's important to call dispatch when you have questions about who belongs on your bus, and what bus you should direct the student to after school.
CALL DISPATCH
That's it!
Head back to the tutorials page to learn more about using SMART tag on your bus routes.