Missouri Bill Aims to Let More People Aged 70+ Drive School Buses

By Andrea Arnold On Mar 4, 2024

Last week, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at relaxing the requirements for those 70 and older to work as school bus drivers, because in a state where neither the cops nor the local citizenry are capable of driving, why not get some septuagenarians behind the wheel of the vehicles we use to transport our children?

House Bill 1626, which aims to spice up our increasingly lawless Mad Max-style wasteland of insane drivers by making it easier for the elderly to pilot 20,000-pound vehicles filled with the souls of the innocent, was sponsored by Rep. Danny Busick (R-Newtown). Its goal, according to a press release, is to address the state’s school bus driver shortage while simultaneously giving Missouri’s senior citizens greater opportunities to spend their golden years carting around other people’s snot-nosed kids.

“Our current statutes are discriminate against experienced drivers, not based on ability, but based on age alone,” Busick writes in a statement. “With this bill, we are opening up an available labor pool for drivers in communities throughout Missouri.”

Current law dictates that those 70 and older who wish to drive school buses must renew their license every year, instead of every three years for younger folk. The renewals include mandatory school bus license examinations and the issuance of a new commercial driver’s license with a school bus endorsement. The new bill would limit the restrictions to people 77 and older to address what it characterizes as the state’s urgent need to recruit more people for the profession.

It makes sense. In a state where stoplights are optional, speed limits are suggestions and even the police can’t seem to avoid the buildings and lightpoles and church signs that keep popping up out of nowhere and throwing themselves in front of officers’ impossible-to-steer SUVs, why on Earth would we subject our elders to the indignity of more regular driver’s exams? It’s not going to make setting foot outside your home any safer. Hell, the owners of a certain recently smashed bar/domicile would probably make the argument that even staying inside your home is taking your life into your own hands around these parts.

HB 1626 is now headed to the Missouri Senate. If it passes there, the bill is “poised to make a positive impact on the recruitment and retention of school bus drivers, ensuring the safe transportation of students across the state,” asserts the press release.

God help us all if those drivers also happen to be Joy FM listeners.

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