Clutch driving
Published 9:37 pm Monday, June 8, 2015
Hazardous situations await school bus drivers on the road every day, and proper preparation and experience are key to safely navigating through them.
On a rainy day last week, the King’s Fork High School varsity girls’ soccer team was profoundly thankful it had the experienced and well-trained Sam Kouri behind the wheel.
The Lady Bulldogs were on the Suffolk side of Windsor on Route 460, headed to a regional semifinal game in Midlothian, when an accident occurred just in front of them.
“The cars, they hit head-on,” said King’s Fork sophomore Janay Pyron. “Then one of the tires, I don’t know if it was from the car that actually got in the accident — I’m pretty sure it was — but the tire came off.”
A van in front of the school bus tried to avoid the tire and the accident, and in that effort, King’s Fork freshman Hannah Marston said, the van “kind of spun around.”
“Our bus driver swerved around it and then avoided a 16-wheeler that was jack-knifing,” she said.
This portion of Route 460 features four lanes, two going in each direction, and the school bus was located in the left-hand lane going west, while the jack-knifing tractor-trailer occupied the right-hand lane.
All the obstacles left little room for Kouri to work with as he lightly applied the brakes on the wet road.
“When I’d seen the opening, that’s where I went,” he said, and then after “about three seconds, we were on the other side of it.”
“We didn’t get a scratch,” he said. “No debris or anything hit the bus. It was amazing.”
King’s Fork senior Rachel Gist even slept through the entire ordeal.
Summarizing Kouri’s heroics, Lady Bulldogs coach Mike Marston said, “somehow, at 40 (miles per hour) in a massive downpour with low visibility, he evasively snaked us through … Luckily, he has years of experience as a truck driver or we certainly would have been involved in a massive pileup.”
Kouri, 73, brings 42 years of experience as a truck driver to his role with Suffolk Public Schools’ transportation department. He said he has been in dangerous situations like this one before.
Noting the combined fleet of SPS buses regularly covers hundreds of miles, Suffolk Public Schools director of transportation Darrin Wills is under no illusions about how often hazardous situations crop up.
“I will be honest with you, I’m sure it happens every day,” he said, though not to the serious extent as the latest incident Kouri navigated.
He said drivers are trained to follow a process when they are on the road — search, predict, identify, decide and then execute.
Wills said the department also makes daily announcements to encourage and prepare drivers for their jobs.
“We want them to be focused and make sure their attitudes are set before they even get behind the wheel,” he said.
Of Kouri’s driving, Wills said, “It was just an outstanding performance.”
“We are very elated, we’re very proud of Mr. Sam, but he’s been doing it here for us for about nine years,” he said.
Of the recent incident, Kouri said he was not nervous until it was over.
“I’m usually a pretty calm person during things like that,” he said. “You’ve got to be calm, you’ve got to keep your mind on what you’re doing.”