© PRNewsFoto/Antelope Valley Schools
The Antelope Valley Schools Transportation Agency is using biometric iris scanners on special needs buses to prevent tragedies like the recent death of an autistic student who was abandoned on his school bus.
Hun Joon "Paul" Lee, a 19-year-old autistic student, was left on a contracted school bus in a district parking lot for hours Sept. 11, when he was found unresponsive laying in the aisle. A substitute driver picked him up at 8:30 a.m. and his parents believe he never got off the bus. Lee's mother realized something was wrong when his bus didn't arrive after school,
NBC Los Angeles reports.
The nearby Antelope Valley Transportation Agency, meanwhile, is conducting a pilot program with iris scanners on special needs buses in hopes of preventing a similar tragedy from occurring in that district.
"Students will biometrically (iris) scan identity as the board and exit the school bus," according to a Monday
press release. "
The IRITRANS system will notify the driver visibly and audibly if the child is about to get on or off at the wrong bus stop. When the bus reaches the end of its daily route, the driver simply ends the route on the IRITRANS mobile device and if all students have not exited the bus, the device will notify the driver both visually and audibly to recheck the bus."
"Lost or sleeping kids. It happens every year in most school districts nationally only we rarely hear about it," IRITRAK president John DeVries said. "Kids left sleeping on a bus is at epidemic proportions nationally."
Comment: While marijuana has shown great promise in treating many different illnesses, it is still a psychotropic substance. Indiscriminate use can cause serious cognitive damage, just as alcohol can. Much more research is needed to find out where and how this plant drug can be used safely and effectively.
- Heavy marijuana use can shrink brain - study
- Teen alcohol and marijuana use can negatively affect brain development into adulthood
- Reefer Madness: Marijuana Throws Brain Regions Out of Sync
- Study: Even casual pot use causes brain abnormalities
- Pot Smoking Can Worsen Schizophrenia
- Daily Pot Smoking May Hasten Onset of Psychosis
On the other hand, you suspect something is wrong with the study when they quote a mother who found her son "unconscious" from a pot overdose. There's really no such thing as a 'pot overdose'--if you overdose you fall asleep. From the newhealthguide.org: "a fatal dose of marijuana would take 40,000 times the amount of THC that it took to get them high in the first place. In comparison, it would only take 5 to 10 times the amount of alcohol to get drunk to kill a human."