It's Bus Safety Week in the Hanover School Division (HSD), during which thousands of students will be partaking in rear door evacuation drills.
"I think this might be a fun one for the kids to go to the back door of the bus. It's something a little different, but also one of those things to practice so, in the rare occurrence that you may need it, you've done it once," says Rob Warkentin, the division's director of Transportation.
As bus safety week kicks off, he says the pubic may notice some out-of-the-ordinary things, including school buses running through drills on the commute home.
"We're not going to do a rear door (evacuation drill) on the roadway, so we're pulling off into parking lots. We potentially do them on the bus loops," Warkentin says.
The drill takes about 10 minutes the director says, and advises parents that their kids may be a little late coming home because of the drill.
In the 20 years he has been with the HSD, he says there have been times rear door evacuations have been needed, but it's not very common.
Even so, it's important for the close to 6,000 students using school buses in the division to learn, as it can help reduce panic in a potentially scary situation.
It's also important for bus drivers, Warkentin says. About 110 driving staff, including those behind the wheel, mechanics, and spare drivers, will also undergo eight hours of training.
That includes a focus on defensive driving.
"Anyone who's driven in the southeast knows there's an awful lot of traffic out and about... So, we want to be as safe as possible," he says, noting the entire HSD fleet usually clocks about 1.6 million kilometers in a school year.
After driving for several years, it can get easy to become complacent, he says, so being retrained in the basics can be essential.
"We're professional drivers here, and we want to model good driving behaviour for the motoring public as well," he says.
Warkentin says there are ways for that "motoring public" to contribute to bus safety as well.
"Be aware of your surroundings if you see a yellow bus going down the road. In the mornings, keep an eye out (for) students waiting at the end of the driveway," he says.
"When the warning lights come on, that means we're approaching a stop, and the when the red lights are on, we're unloading or loading our passengers... There's going to be students there."
He asks for some space as they do so, adding it doesn't take that long and will be a short wait before commuters can get back on their way.