A Howard County school bus carrying 16 Glenwood Middle School students ended up 21 miles off its normal route this week, crossing county lines into Carroll County before students used their own phones to alert authorities that something was wrong with their driver. Maryland State Police located the bus on Maryland Route 97 just south of Westminster, and none of the students were hurt.
According to WBFF, state police received their first dispatch call at 3:16 p.m. about a middle school bus that had traveled off its route. The bus had departed Glenwood Middle School for its normal route before ending up traveling near Westminster in Carroll County, well beyond where it should have been. The Carroll County Sheriff's Office responded to the bus near Bartholow Road at 3:24 p.m., where deputies said the driver, a 68-year-old woman, appeared to be disoriented. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance, and a preliminary investigation suggested the driver might have experienced a medical emergency.
Behind the scenes, Howard County Public School System transportation officials were watching the bus in real time. As The Baltimore Banner reports, officials accessed live onboard security camera feeds to locate and monitor the bus after receiving emergency calls from students about 15 minutes after dismissal from Glenwood Middle School, which lets out daily at 2:35 p.m. That timeline offers context for how a disoriented driver could end up roughly 21 miles from the school near Westminster, beyond where students were supposed to be dropped off.
School System Confirms Driver's Status
An HCPSS spokesperson confirmed after the incident that the driver was receiving medical care and is not currently driving for the school system while an internal investigation remains ongoing, the same Banner report notes. The bus was operated by Bowen's Bus Service, Inc., a Glenelg-based contractor that has served HCPSS for 25 years and currently manages 56 school routes across the district, per the outlet's reporting.
The incident also puts a spotlight on Maryland's medical fitness standards for school bus drivers. Under Maryland Transportation Code § 16-816 and state motor vehicle regulations, all school bus drivers must maintain a valid Commercial Driver's License with Passenger and School Bus endorsements and pass a medical physical examination certified by a DOT-registered medical examiner. Maryland House Bill 478, enacted in the 2024 legislative session, changed the frequency of that screening, mandating that school vehicle drivers pass a medical examination at least once every two years, according to the Maryland General Assembly. State regulations had previously required annual exams.
A Contractor Already Under Scrutiny
This isn't the first safety question raised around Bowen's Bus Service. In April 2025, an 80-year-old school bus aide employed by the company was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and sex offenses involving two nonverbal 13-year-old students on an HCPSS bus in Ellicott City, according to Columbia Patch. School officials reportedly assisted police in that case after reviewing internal camera footage, a similar tool to the one used to track this week's bus.
Bowen's has also been a focal point in the region's ongoing driver shortage. For the 2026–2027 school year, the company offered starting wages of $31.50 per hour with a guaranteed six hours per full school day for CDL-certified drivers — pay that Hoodline previously noted was well above the roughly $20.72 hourly starting rate offered by contractors in neighboring Baltimore County, a gap detailed in Hoodline's earlier report on regional bus driver shortages.
Emergency Protocols Kicked In Fast
Howard County Public School System emergency protocols call for transportation staff and dispatchers to coordinate directly with 911 while administrators deploy student bus rosters to assist law enforcement and notify parents, per HCPSS Policy 3010. Those procedures appear to have moved quickly here, with school officials monitoring the bus by camera even as state and county law enforcement converged on its location near Westminster.
Howard County has leaned increasingly on technology to police school bus safety in recent years. The district's police department issued 5,242 citations to drivers for illegally passing stopped school buses during the 2025–2026 school year through automated stop-arm camera enforcement, according to Columbia Patch, part of a partnership with BusPatrol America LLC that began in 2021. Open questions remain about the exact nature of the driver's medical emergency and whether her medical certification was current at the time of the incident.
