While not ideal, the alternative is kids continuing to sit in buses that idle for long periods of time slowly leaking diesel exhaust into the cabin area (at least that was the case with the Bluebird models I rode as a kid), that can't be good.
Electrification of bus fleets is an absolute good. Electric buses may cost more in the short run, but for the sake of children's health, not to mention the world they live in, school districts should be dumping diesel in favor of electric as soon as they can afford to do so. As taxpayers we should be ready to foot the bill.
There are real concerns with privatization of school bus fleets though. Safety obviously, but also advertising and marketing to children as other posters have pointed out. If a company offered school districts a subscription model with diesel buses we'd be rightfully suspicious of where this could lead. We should maintain these suspicions even as we encourage phasing out diesel fleets in favor of electric.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Student_(United_States)
Oddly the reason why is different for the two fluids. Gasoline can catch fire quickly and form a fireball, whereas diesel is hard to ignite and won't help start a fire.
This movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Wave_(film)
has a scene where the kids set a school bus on fire with the fuel which isn't realistic.
2m08s for Jet-A. 3m50s for #2 diesel. 6m03s for heating oil. 7m30s for kerosene (all those are basically the same and surprising to most how not flammable they are in liquid form). 10m15s for avgas. 11m30s for auto gas.
All you need is some tissue and a gas soldering iron or equivalent lighter. Lights up in under one second.
Thermal runaway, stranded energy and battery reignition should preclude EV usage to transport children until adequate safety measures are put in place. EV car fires are intense, high voltage and severe. A bus full of children fire doesn't bear thinking about.
They burn with the equivalent of a 220v welder across the whole battery skateboard, will literally melt aluminum wheels and body parts and require 20 tons of water to temporarily extinguish. There's a huge difference between an ICE vehicle fire, which is essentially rubber, upholstery and plastics burning sometime compounded by gasoline vapor and an EV thermal runaway trapped energy event. I think all EVs should be required to have manual escape locks etc at a minimum. https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k
A demonstration of a gasoline vs battery fire https://youtu.be/tuVxwmnhqP4
This is a EV fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdaFk3w6rUY
And this is a diesel school bus on fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPrUdP_POg
If any vehicle catches on fire, you have to leave the vehicle, or risk death. There is no "safe fire"
The 220v mig welder example was to demonstrate the different fire characteristics of a trapped/runaway energy battery fire vs gasoline fire. All commercial vehicles such as school buses have a significant fire risk from hydraulic fluids used for brakes, steering etc.
Here is is a refuse truck hydraulic fire example https://youtu.be/aj8-JlRqoWc
The dramatic bus fire you found was probably a combination of that and upholstery. Diesel is much less flammable than gasoline, one of the reasons for its use in commercial vehicles. https://www.anl.gov/article/7-things-you-might-not-know-abou...
Again, a major concern for me is the over reliance on electric door locks in EVs, which have trapped Tesla drivers who then burnt to death in high voltage fires. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-driv...
Manual locks would be far safer, especially on school bus full of children. I am not opposed to EVs but I do feel there is a very unrealistic utopian view of their strengths while completely ignoring weaknesses, mostly due to massive public relations persuasiveness.
I definitely agree that manual locks are safer -- school bus emergency exits don't even have locks, they simply only have latches on the inside. This isn't a problem with batteries though -- this is a problem with Tesla.