Are you worried about how safe your child's school bus is?

School Bus
Flickr user: Bsabarnowl
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Now you can find out.

Ray Martinez, the Chief Administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, says a new school bus report card is available online "so that parents can check 24-7, 365 days a year, on the school buses that their children ride to school everyday."

He says, "The MVC does inspections twice a year on every single school transport vehicle in the state - and that's a significant number of vehicles. It's an exhaustive 180 point check on each of the 24 thousand school vehicles used in the Garden State - twice a year - but then we also with the State Police. We'll do spot inspections around the state - on the vehicles…And that's to make sure our most precious cargo are being transported in a safe manner."

Martinez adds, "This new tool allows parents to say, well how safe is the vehicle that my child is riding in…They can check and see how the specific bus did in its last inspection, how well the company or the school district did generally, and what type of failures may have taken place…This is something we've been trying to get going for a while…Parents are constantly contacting us about the safety of the school buses in their district."

He also points out, "We know this is a constant concern for school districts, because they have to maintain the buses…This is a way for the MVC, as part of our responsibility, to be transparent and say look, you don't have to contact us directly and leave it to interpretation, we're going to make this public, available to everyone… everybody can check this out on the website."

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