How HopSkipDrive’s Safety Advisory Council Shapes the Future of Safe Student Transportation

At HopSkipDrive, safety is at the heart of everything we do. Our purpose-built technology and policy frameworks help school districts solve their hardest transportation challenges and get every student to school safely. By collaborating directly with independent experts, we make sure our platform keeps evolving to support youth in foster care, students experiencing homelessness, and students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

That's why we're highlighting the ongoing work of HopSkipDrive's Safety Advisory Council (SAC). Formed in May 2025, this independent group of specialized experts advises HopSkipDrive on critical measures affecting riders, CareDrivers, and client partners. Most recently, during a hands-on workshop in Denver, the council helped craft a draft safety framework focused on safe student transportation — one that sharpens platform policies and directly informs upcoming product development.

From Advisory to Action: Real Wins for Safe Student Transportation

Over the past year, the Safety Advisory Council's strategic insights have moved from concept to tangible platform features and policy wins:

• Ride Recording: In-App: Built alongside a clear consent and retention framework, this feature — part of CareEngine — is now standard across all eligible rides. Audio and video are captured automatically, encrypted, and accessible to districts directly through RideIQ. There's no hardware that breaks or camera that a driver forgets to turn on. The driver never has access to the footage.

• Enhanced Rider Verification: Moving beyond traditional spoken code words, the council helped shape new mechanisms to confirm the right rider enters the right vehicle every time.

• Structured IEP and Support Data: The council helped shape a move away from open-text notes toward structured, actionable details within the HopSkipDrive platform, so CareDrivers receive consistent information to support each student's unique needs.

• Legislative and Policy Advocacy: Insights from the council have helped elevate screening standards across the industry while maintaining essential safeguards for student transportation.

"HopSkipDrive is built with students’ safety at the center of what we do. Safety is the reason we started the company, and having outside experts in the room has already changed how we build," said Joanna McFarland, Co-Founder and CEO of HopSkipDrive. "We didn't get to better rider verification, or the policy ground we've gained, without them. Their questions get us there faster than we ever could alone."

Expanding Expertise: What's Next for Safe Student Transportation

HopSkipDrive is also pleased to welcome Kyndra Webb from the National Safety Council to the SAC. Webb brings expertise in child passenger safety, strengthening our commitment to safe, equitable mobility for all youth.

Webb is a program manager at the National Safety Council, where she leads child passenger safety programming and curriculum development. She has been a Child Passenger Safety Technician since 2013 and a certified instructor since 2014, and she has served on the National Child Passenger Safety Board as both secretariat and curriculum representative. She also built the country's first and only statewide adaptive fitting station, expanding access to specialized car seats for children with complex medical and developmental needs.

Heading into the second half of 2026, HopSkipDrive and the council are developing a new framework focused on rider behavior support, designed to keep students safely transported and supported. HopSkipDrive is also investing in features to help riders who cannot easily advocate for themselves more seamlessly report concerns.

This shift — from an advisory group to a structural part of how we build — is shaping the next phase of our safety work.

Through expert collaboration, purpose-built technology, and proactive policy engagement, HopSkipDrive continues to raise the bar for safe student transportation.