“Anyone can drive a car. It takes someone special to drive a bus.” Thirty-nine Shelby County bus drivers recently proved this statement to be true by competing in the district’s annual Bus Road-e-o on April 15 at the Alabama Traffic Safety Center on the campus of the University of Montevallo.

The Bus Road-E-O event tests the driver’s skill in maneuvering their bus through a challenging obstacle course designed to simulate various situations that the drivers would encounter every day while driving their bus, such as railroad crossings, backing the bus into a parking space, making a right hand turn and picking up students. The drivers also had to maneuver their buses through cones in a serpentine line and stop the bus at a stop line with the appropriate amount of distance between the bus and the line.  Drivers were awarded points for doing the maneuvers correctly and not knocking down any of the orange cones on the course.

Winners of the Bus Road-E-O were:

1^st Place – Susan Price – Columbiana Middle

2^nd Place – Nancy Hamm – Chelsea High

3^rd Place – Allison Stancil – Shelby County High

4^th Place – Kenny Dukes – Montevallo High

5^th Place – Wayne Price – Montevallo Middle

Others in the top ten were: Ron Collins – Helena High; Allan Lowe – Elvin Hill Elementary; Raul Martinez – Montevallo Middle; Patsy Broadhead, Montevallo Middle; and Shane Loth, Linda Nolen Learning Center