Right-handed shape
Sayed Jaafar Al-Abbar in 2008, Rashid Abu Zahira in 2013, Hassan Al-Mahari in 2025, children lost by Bahraini society because they were forgotten on kindergarten and school buses, only to face suffocation and death due to low oxygen and the scorching heat of the sun.
The press recorded the three incidents, in which the main culprit was the forgetfulness and negligence of those who left them in vehicles to face torture for hours that ended in death. The last of them was the child Hassan Al-Mahari, who caused grief for all the people of Bahrain and the Jannusan region in particular, after the Ministry of the Interior announced that the Northern Governorate Police Directorate began its procedures immediately upon receiving a report from one of the workers in a kindergarten in Hamad Town, stating that there was a missing child inside a vehicle. To raise awareness, when the police and the National Ambulance moved to the site, it was found that the child had died, and investigations revealed the negligence of the 40-year-old driver of the vehicle, as she forgot the child inside the car that was not designated for transporting students, which led to his death.
The prosecution investigated the incident, moved to the scene of the accident, conducted the necessary inspection, and ordered the car to be seized and examined. It also assigned the forensic doctor to manage the physical evidence, while interrogating the accused, who admitted to the accusation attributed to her, and decided that she was a profession of transporting children and students to kindergartens and schools, without obtaining a license from the competent authorities, and that she was doing so through her own vehicle. Not licensed to transport, she also admitted that she had forgotten the victim child inside her vehicle for several hours, which caused his death. The Public Prosecution ordered her detention pending investigation, and ordered the child’s body to be handed over to his family, where he was buried the day before yesterday.
Twelve years ago, Bahrain witnessed a similar incident when five-year-old Rashid Abu Zuhaira died on the kindergarten bus after being forgotten inside from the early hours of the morning until noon and suffering from severe heat exhaustion. The driver was surprised to find the child lying on one of the chairs in a deplorable condition, so he was transferred to the Bahrain International Hospital near the school, where first aid was administered to him, but his heart did not respond to the resuscitation attempts he made. Doctors saved his life, and he breathed his last as a result of severe heat exhaustion.
In 2008, the 4-year-old child, Sayed Jaafar Al-Abbar, was left behind for 4 hours on the kindergarten bus, until the heat of the sun melted his small body. He left, recording his attempts to open the bus door and falling behind it after his strength failed and he was defeated by heat exhaustion.
The unfortunate matter does not stop at the local issue, as the child, Shamma bint Yasser Al-Jahouri, survived the child, Yasser Al-Mahari, by only one week, when she was left inside a school bus in the state of Al-Suwaiq in the Sultanate of Oman until she died, on October 7, and last May, a six-year-old Moroccan child died on a bus transporting students, which caused great sadness in the Kingdom of Morocco.
A decrease in student transportation licenses
The license to practice student transport activity witnessed a decrease of 1.6%, as the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which is responsible for issuing licenses in the year 2023, recorded the issuance of 498 licenses to practice student transport activity, including 423 licenses for individual independent drivers, and 75 for companies operating in the field of transportation, decreasing to 428 licenses for the year 2024, of which 365 are for individuals and 63 for companies.
“Transportation” and “Interior” efforts
The Ministry of Transportation is making efforts to ensure regulation of the student transportation sector and to provide safe and reliable services that meet the needs of schools and parents alike. It called on parents to be careful to choose licensed student transportation vehicles. To ensure the safety of their children and protect their rights, stressing that choosing a licensed transportation vehicle contributes to strengthening trust between parents and service providers, and ensures their commitment to the standards and requirements set by the Ministry to ensure the safety of students.
The matter did not stop at the Ministry of Transportation, as the Ministry of the Interior, through the General Traffic Department, organized a number of educational and awareness lectures for drivers transporting school students in the public and private sectors, during which it stressed the importance of safe and sound transportation for students by adhering to traffic regulations and rules. It also called on parents to ensure the safety of drivers’ licenses issued by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
It authorizes them to practice the activity of transporting students, in order to preserve their safety, as the General Traffic Department will take legal measures against violating drivers in this regard.
Regional and international solutions
To repeat the problem in all countries of the world, some countries have set various standards to protect children, as the United States of America and Canada have equipped most buses with video cameras and audio recorders that monitor and record the behavior of passengers and the driver, and it is expected that artificial intelligence will be integrated into bus cameras to monitor any abnormal movements and quickly alert officials.
In Germany, the German Automobile Club, whose membership includes more than 13 million people, inspects school buses, detects any defects in them, and reports them to the police, the press, and school administrations, so that transport companies have no choice but to correct the deficiencies immediately.
In the Emirates, the young man, Fahim Almas, was able to devise a solution to the problem of school students forgetting on school buses, and he made a device that counts those entering and exiting the bus, issues an audio alarm and sends a text message to the bus supervisors and the bus driver in the event of a defect in the number of bus passengers, and in cases of forgetfulness inside school buses, as the device counts those entering and exiting the bus through 3 sensors. Some of them are students.
When the bus engine is turned off, the device performs a final smart calculation of the number of students inside the bus. If the number is zero, the device shuts down automatically. However, if the number is any number other than zero, this means that there is an imbalance in the number of people entering and leaving the bus. The device then issues an audio alert and sends text messages via a phone chip installed inside it and programmed to specific numbers, including phone numbers. School bus supervisors and bus driver number.
Expert recommendations
International experts recommended taking a set of measures to avoid these incidents, which were summarized as follows:
– The driver must be able to monitor the entire situation inside the bus, either through a mirror, or cameras distributed in all its corners, and other mirrors or cameras that show him the doors for boarding and alighting outside the bus.
– Ensure that air conditioning and ventilation devices are valid and operating during the trip.
The driver must ensure the number of students on the bus and get them all off, review the number before leaving the site, and search inside the bus for any presence of sleeping children or tools that have been forgotten by them.
