Students have been learning about bus safety this week.

Robert Warkentin is the director of transportation with the Hanover School Division. Warkentin says this year's Bus Safety Week theme is #StopOnRed where people are reminded to stop behind and in front of the bus when its stop sign is out and red lights are flashing.

"When our reds go on and the door opens, students are either entering or leaving. At that point, it's a red light and so we ask that our traffic around come to a stop."

Bus driver Ruth going over bus evacuation procedures with students.Warkentin notes, with the cameras installed on some of the buses during the summer, they have caught several people driving through the stop sign and red lights, footage which has been submitted to the RCMP to make those prosecutions.

He says it's also important for students to know about bus evacuations, and students throughout the division were getting a refresher on Thursday.

"We always do a bus evacuation, we do front doors in fall and then in spring, we'll do the rear door evacuation. The kids need to listen to the drivers, listen to the instructions, that if something does happen and we need to get out of the bus, they know how to do it and know how to do it safely, get to a safe place, and get away from any danger, if there happens to be some."

Warkentin says even students who don't regularly take the bus participate in the evacuations in case something were to happen during an event like a field trip.

"Our bus drivers usually give the basic rules of the bus. They talk about some of the safety items we have; emergency kit, and our fire extinguisher. They'll usually talk about where our two-way [radio] is so that a student could contact base if the driver couldn't."

He adds he's been with the transportation department for about 14.5 years and throughout that time hasn't seen any really critical events. Warkentin notes there have been times in winter where a bus may get stuck and the front door is not able to open, so the students exit through the rear door and then load up onto another bus, which takes them to school.

Warkentin says, generally speaking, in any collision the safest place tends to be inside of the bus.