The tools you need to make sure your child's bus is safe

It's chilling news that even in this Internet age spread more quickly by phone and word of mouth, fueled by fear.

A bus headed to your child's school has crashed. Kids are hurt. Ambulances are on the may.

It's every parent's nightmare and it happened just this week, on the second day of school when a bus taking 22 students to HISD's Revere Middle School hit a tree just blocks from the school.

The bus was owned by a private company. Parents sometimes hire outside transportation when students live close to a school and don't qualify for HISD busing.

No one was seriously injured but18 were taken to the hospital for minor injuries and checkups.

We dove into this story that day and found some red flags about the bus.

It's information that you, or the parents of the kids on that bus, could have found out, too. And we want to show you how.

The first thing you can do is take a look at the bus. On the side is a US Department of Transportation number.

The DOT has a website that allows anyone to put in that number to see who owns the bus and if it's registered with the government and if it's been inspected.

Go to that website by clicking here.

In this case, the records show this: That the company that owns the bus is called Rachel's Bus Service.

There's the first red flag. The parents who put their kids on the bus that crashed knew the company as Nancy's Bus Service. In fact, Nancy's Bus Service's name and number is stenciled right there on the back.

Another red flag: the phone number for Nancy's and the phone number on the DOT website detailing Rachel's are the same number. What's going on here?

We then put the name of Rachel's bus service into this website run by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, cleverly named the Truck Stop. It tells you more about transportation services like buses that carry more than 15 passengers.

Here's the link to that site.

That's when we found the next red flag.

Rachel's isn't on the list. The law says it should be if it wants to run buses in Texas. (It has since been listed by DMV officials after they launched an investigation into the bus company in the wake of our report.)

Here's the biggest red flag. We put Nancy's Bus Service into the DMV search engine and found this.

That thumbs down symbol? That's Texan for this bus shouldn't be on the road much less filled with kids driving to school.

Lots of red flags all the way around and lots of questions for parents to ask.

Do your kids ride on a bus owned by a private company? Use these tools and see if you might have some questions of your own.

If you find something, let us know using the online tip line to the right or Tweet us @TedOberg.

Producer: Trent Seibert