Pre-Trip Inspection of Passenger-Carrying Vehicles
Domain 1 tests whether you can prove a bus is safe before it moves: the exterior walk-around, air-brake tests, the lighting check, and the interior and emergency-equipment survey. Expect to narrate a fixed sequence and to name passenger-specific items a truck driver would never check.
Walk-around and brakes
Start at the driver's door and move clockwise, saying what you see. Cover tires (4/32 in tread on front steer tires, 2/32 in elsewhere, no cuts or bulges), rims, lug nuts, hub oil, brake chambers, push rods and slack adjusters, hoses, springs, air bags, shocks, steering, exhaust, frame, fuel tank and straps, battery box, windshield and wipers. On air brakes, do the static leak test (engine off, brakes released, loss no more than 3 psi in one minute for a single vehicle), the applied test (no more than 4 psi per minute), confirm the low-air warning before 60 psi, and watch spring brakes set by 45 psi.
Lighting and interior
Check headlights high and low, clearance and marker lamps, turn signals, four-way flashers, brake and backup lights, plate lamp, and stepwell lights. Inside: seats and stanchions secure, aisle clear, every exit - rear door, side windows, roof hatches - opens from inside and outside and triggers the alarm, extinguisher at 5 B:C minimum, mounted and charged, three reflective triangles aboard.
Worked example
At the left rear you find the roof-hatch handle missing. This is not cosmetic: an exit that cannot be opened from inside fails the inspection, so the bus is not dispatched - you write the defect, call dispatch, and take another vehicle.
Traps
Testing lights without a helper and never checking the exit alarm; reading the extinguisher label but not the gauge; ignoring stepwell lighting.