On the surface, Monday's deadly school bus accident in Feng county, Jiangsu, was different from recent high-profile tragedies involving overloaded and unlicensed buses.
But the latest accident, which claimed at least 15 students' lives, again sheds light on the sad state of school buses on the mainland, particularly in rural areas where local governments have failed to address a lack of safe transport for pupils. It follows a big push by the central government in recent years to close grass-roots rural schools - making transport to farther-off schools a necessity.
The licensed school bus was carrying 29 pupils from a primary school in Shouxian township when it flipped and plunged into a roadside ditch as the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming tricycle.
The incident came just one day after the Legislature Affairs Office of the State Council posted a draft of new school bus safety regulations online for a month of public consultation. This followed a public outcry over the deaths of 19 kindergarten pupils and two adults on an overcrowded bus that hit a coal truck head-on in Gansu last month.
However, the State Council office failed to spell out details about the huge cost of the school bus upgrades called for in the draft.
Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said both the central and local governments needed to show strong leadership by coming up with necessary funding to improve the safety of school buses, particularly for poorer regions.
