In an emergency or a developing crisis that is not on the mandatory evacuation list, what is the general rule about whether to keep students on the bus?

Explanation

The starting assumption is that the children stay where they are, unless remaining aboard is itself what exposes them to harm. Children in seats can be counted, kept together, and shielded by the body of the bus; the same children strung along a verge are harder to supervise and are standing in traffic. There is a second edge to the rule, though, which is that if the call to evacuate is going to be made it has to be made promptly, so the default is a place to start from rather than permission to dither. Weighed against it are fire or the risk of one, any smell of spilled or escaping fuel, power lines down, water rising or a tornado sighted, a hazardous spill, whether putting the children out would expose them to fast traffic or harsh weather, whether moving them might worsen a neck, back, or fracture injury, and whether another vehicle could run into the bus. Given time, the driver should get the dispatcher on the radio and talk it through before deciding. Two of the wrong options swap that judgment for an absolute, pointing opposite ways, and each absolute fails in exactly the cases the other one handles: evacuating every time puts children on a roadway over a flat tire, and never moving until responders arrive leaves them aboard a bus that is alight. The fourth hands a decision that is the driver's alone to the passengers.

Source: 49 CFR 383.123(a)(2)(ii)