For 30 years or more prior to the enrollment boom of the 1960s, students were used as school bus drivers in a number of states across the country. Carefully selected, strictly trained, and thoroughly supervised, 16- and 17-year-olds were used to drive school buses in more than 20 states, with Wyoming even hiring 15-year-olds for a while. Near the end of the 1960s, states began to move away from using the teenage drivers. The state bus systems became overloaded and more youths were becoming involved in accidents. By 1968, most states had raised the minimum driving age for school bus drivers to 21. Today, there are only 12 states that still hire school bus drivers under the age of 18: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming.
