Overcrowded Buses, Underwhelming Regulations

School buses are meant to provide safe and convenient transportation to schoolchildren, but in China they have become killers. This year, there have been reports of seven bus accidents nationwide that have resulted in casualties. The recent kindergarten van accident in Gansu Province's Qingyang City was the worst, killing 21 people and injuring 43 more.

On November 16 at a hospital in the province's Zhengning County, parents waited outside the operating room anxiously awaiting information about the condition of their children, who studied at Little Ph.D. kindergarten in Yulinzi Town. That day, their severely overloaded van went into the wrong lane. It was rated for a maximum capacity of nine people, but had been packed with 64. When it collided with a coal truck, 19 children and two adults were killed. Most of the parents of the victims were migrant workers who had left their children in the care of grandparents.