Jonathan Adkins
Governors Highway Safety Association
Every day, student transportation professionals carry one of the most important responsibilities in education, safely moving millions of students to and from school. While the school bus itself is incredibly safe, we all know some of the biggest risks happen outside the bus, at the stop, on neighborhood roads, in the everyday traffic our students travel through.
That’s why this conversation with Jonathan Adkins, chief executive officer of the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) is so important. GHSA’s work around driver behavior, public education, enforcement, and state-level safety strategy directly intersects with what our members experience every day.
What gives me hope is that we don’t have to tackle this alone. When highway safety leaders, student transportation professionals, law enforcement, and communities come together, we create a stronger circle of protection around students. Conversations like this one help us move from awareness to action, and that’s how real safety progress happens.
In the following interview, Jonathan Adkins shares his perspective on the evolving landscape of highway and school bus safety, and why stronger alignment between national safety leaders and student transportation professionals is more important than ever.
GHSA’s mission is to lead states and territories toward zero traffic deaths through leadership, partnerships, and advocacy. How do you describe GHSA’s role in the broader national traffic and school bus safety ecosystem today?
We represent the state and territorial highway safety offices, as well as many partners across the country. We’re the folks that oversee behavioral safety, anything that impacts a driver’s behavior, behavioral issues on the road, drunk driving, distracted driving, seatbelt use, child passenger safety. We’re not the infrastructure people.
As we think about school bus safety, a lot of what we do at the local level is provide connections, connections between the state highway safety office, the school bus safety communities, the DMVs, and other partners. The highway safety offices at the state level really have that strong, convening role.
How does GHSA balance national policy leadership with the need for state flexibility in highway safety programming, especially in areas like school bus safety that touch education, enforcement, and technology?
Well, no surprise, being the Governors Highway Safety Association, we do lean toward the state flexibility side. I grew up in West Virginia, and thinking back to where I grew up, the experiences in West Virginia are quite different than where I’m sitting in Washington DC today. So, we do look for that state flexibility.
We love to promote new approaches, try new things, think about technology and stop-arm enforcement as well as other automated enforcement. We like to take actions that will encourage flexibility and allow states to work with local partners, including the school bus safety community, to do what works best in their community, with a little bit of flexibility to implement new things. We don’t know what works sometimes unless we try it.
The National School Bus Safety Summit, hosted by BusPatrol, brought national leaders together to accelerate solutions for illegal bus passing and student safety. What stood out to you about the collaboration and its potential to drive real change?
I think those of us in seats like I’m in have to be honest and say, we probably haven’t been as engaged in the school bus safety issues as we should be. I learned a lot, frankly. I was there mostly to listen throughout the day. And while there was certainly a strong focus on stop-arm safety, it really focused more comprehensively, thinking about how do we engage law enforcement? What’s the role of public education? What’s the role of driver training? What’s the role for parents and other adult caregivers?
I left with a call to action to encourage state highway safety offices to convene with people locally, to look at what’s working, and what some of the challenges are. Particularly, you think about near misses, and that thankfully, there are not a lot of children killed during their trip to and from school, but there are far too many near misses.
We have to do a better job prioritizing this issue.
NAPT represents the professionals who operate and manage student transportation every day. From GHSA’s perspective, what are the most valuable ways that GHSA and NAPT align in their work, and how can that partnership be strengthened to better protect students?
GHSA and NAPT share a clear mission: keeping students safe on and around school buses. When you think about unsafe driving, distracted drivers, speeding, or impaired driving, these are challenges we address across all roadway safety efforts. In other words, your issues are our issues.
We’re seeing strong alignment in bringing our organizations together, exploring technology solutions, and engaging communities; it’s exciting to see the partnership get off the ground. Community buy-in is critical, people need to understand why tools like automated enforcement exist. It’s not about “catching” drivers; it’s about protecting kids.
Together, GHSA and NAPT can align state-level highway safety strategies with the day-to-day realities of student transportation. That includes joint public education campaigns, shared data insights, coordinated advocacy on school bus safety policies, and collaboration on how emerging technologies are implemented.
Opportunities also exist to convene stakeholders through joint events, share best practices between states and districts, and elevate the voice of student transportation professionals in broader highway safety conversations.
With changes in technology, data use, and traffic patterns nationwide, what emerging challenges and opportunities do you see ahead for highway and school bus safety? How is GHSA preparing the highway safety community to respond?
Well, there’s a heck of a lot going on in technology, and I think it is largely positive. You think about Waymo and other automated driving car services that are out there, and more that are coming, but there are some safety challenges there. And so we are, again, being conveners, bringing Waymo, and others in the automotive vehicle community together to talk about these challenges.
We’ve also just launched a new training program for local law enforcement, so when they are investigating a crash that involves an AV, they know what to look for, they know what kind of equipment they’re dealing with However, what we really want is to avoid these crashes. So, we are spending time this year bringing people together, highlighting some of the recent technology, while making sure that programs are being implemented the right way, with safety as the guiding force.
If you could leave NAPT members and the School BUSRide audience with one key message about advancing safety for students on the road, what would it be?
To keep forging ahead and trying new things and piloting innovative ideas. Don’t listen to the naysayers. There’s always a lot of negative voices out there that don’t want to try new things, or that say the way that we’re doing it is just fine. I would encourage your members to innovate and push ahead because the safety of our students depends on it. There’s nothing more important, so it’s worth pushing. It’s worth that extra fight, and I’m happy to stand with them anytime.