Terrie Miller isn’t much for attention, but she got some Monday night from a grateful school district after her driving skills saved a busload of students and coaches from slamming into a row of stopped cars in September.
Miller was driving a full school bus on the highway from Portland to Seaside on Friday, Sept. 25, ferrying the Sweet Home cross-country team to a meet at Camp Rilea.
On Highway 26, on a “nice 55 mph curve,” Miller said she had no premonition anything was wrong, though she said she noticed there had been no oncoming traffic for a while.
Halfway through the curve she saw why. So did cross-country Coach Billy Snow, who was sitting a couple of seats back.
“It was a tight corner and traffic was at a dead stop right around the corner,” he said.
Directly in front of the bus were a white Ford Explorer-type vehicle and a Cadillac Eldorado, Miller said, “at a crooked angle.”
Snow said it obviously had been a panic stop.
“One had its tires six inches away from the ditch and the other one, right in front of us, was just short of plowing into the one that was almost off the road.
“Terri just very calmly said, “hold on,” Snow said. “I don’t know if the kids in the back knew what was going on, but those of us in front did.”
The bus stopped, wedged neatly between the oncoming traffic lane and the vehicles along the right shoulder, he said.
“The driver’s side was just slightly into the oncoming lane and the car in front of us was next to the door,” Snow said.
Miller, who has been driving buses for the district for 13 years and does the daily Route 21, serving Crawfordsville and North River Drive, as well as driving trips, said she’d never been in a situation like that one.
“I’ve heard people pull out in front of you and drive 10 mph but I’ve never experienced that,” she said.
“I think I was standing on the brakes, out of my seat. I remember telling the kids to ‘hang on, hang on,’ or something like that. When I got stopped, I got the bus secured and checked on the kids. Then I sat there for a few minutes. Then my hands started to shake.”
Snow said the incident was “scary but impressive.”
“She stuck the nose of that bus right where it had to be,” he said.
“She was calm on the outside. I don’t know what was going on inside.
“I said, ‘You OK?’ and she said ‘I will be.'”
District Transportation Supervisor L.C. Ellison said Miller was one of the first three people he hired after arriving at the district in 1999 and she has been accident free since then.
“She has been kind of a shining star, operating a bus,” he said. Miller has undergone a variety of snow and adverse weather training and recently was one of a group of drivers who traveled to the Hoodoo Ski Bowl parking lot to work on handling skid situations.
“All these things add to their confidence level when they operate a 40-foot vehicle,” Ellison said.
He said the near-crash that Miller avoided was “fairly rare.” Although there are occasional fender-benders, the last serious collision was about 10 years ago in the Independence area, involving a bus and a milk truck, he said.
Part of the reason for that is drivers are taught defensive skills, including reading the road and planning ahead for danger. All district buses are also equipped with anti-lock braking systems.
“All these things add to your confidence level when you operate a 40-foot vehicle,” Ellison said. “But with 25,000 pounds going down the road, it takes a while to stop. She made a decision, got on the brakes, yelled to alert the kids, and put it in only available space left. All those things show you a very confident, skillful operator.”
Miller said that when they finally reached their destination at Camp Rilea, a National Guard base north of Seaside on Highway 101, “the kids got off and I did get teary-eyed. That was scary.”
She said she “got really teary-eyed” later when the students signed a thank-you note and gave it to her.
Miller, whose personal wheels are a Yamaha 650 motorcycle, said riding the bike has raised her defensive-driver awareness. She has also had defensive driving training from veteran district driver Joyce Ritterbush that has included danger scenarios, “though none quite like this one.”
It was 20 minutes before the bus could move after it stopped, she said.
“What got me is that there should have been a first response there,” Miller said of the fatal head-on crash a mile up the road that caused the back-up.
She credited Snow’s policy of discouraging students from standing up or walking around the bus with helping to avoid bigger problems in the panic stop.
“Billy Snow has a great bunch of kids,” she said. “They were in their seats. By them staying seated, I was able to do what needed to be done. I’m thankful nobody got hurt.”