Winter 2023-24 won’t be remembered as having been a harsh one, from Blair County’s perspective.

True, it did have its challenging moments but, all considered, Blair can count itself lucky, in terms of snowfall amount, icy temperatures and winter misery in general.

Overall, it wasn’t that bad, especially from the standpoint of anyone having to drive a vehicle, no matter winter’s penchant for trickiness, unpredictability and unpleasant surprises.

Still, many people here are getting impatient about not yet having had an extended period of bright, sunny, generally springlike conditions.

After all, many residents note, winter, no matter whether severe or mild, exacts a toll on homes, yards and vehicles, and those residents look forward to the opportunity to ready their personal environment for the newness that summer generally conveys.

But while winter increasingly becomes the farthest thing from Blair residents’ minds, not so for entities like the state Department of Transportation, municipal governments and transportation agencies like Blair’s Amtran bus service — all having the responsibility to start planning for next winter after the current one ends.

For example, regarding Amtran, drivers’ attention to the issue of safety has become a major component in the agency’s gearing-up for Winter 2024-25.

“There are plans to redouble efforts to focus drivers’ attention on safety when next winter comes,” reported an article in the Mirror’s April 19 edition.

One of the elements of the next-winter planning has involved a precision driving exercise, which, undoubtedly, will be beneficial from the standpoint of the other three seasons of the year.

However, winter weather conditions were not the chief culprit contributing to the perceived need for that exercise. Instead, it was the frequency of accidents involving buses over the past nine months, according to the April 19 article.

That article pointed out that Amtran buses were involved in 16 preventable accidents during that time period. Fortunately, most were minor, involving an object such as a sign or a parked vehicle.

Nevertheless, minor or not, they represent an unwanted blot on Amtran’s safety record — a blot of which the bus service wants to rid itself and remain free of, going forward, no matter what the season.

According to Amtran CEO Josh Baker and Deputy CEO Michele Barnes, the “ridding process” began with an analysis of crash data, a mentoring program for employees and a safety performance newsletter.

For the benefit of readers who might not have had the opportunity to read the April 19 article, which was headlined “Amtran looks to curb accident frequency,” the crash-data analysis, which covered the years back to 1998, showed that accidents were most common during the months of January and February and also were most common during the first five years of a driver’s career.

Neither of those findings was shocking, but they were valuable from the vantage point of knowing where and how to pinpoint remedial efforts.

Baker said the mentoring program involves more experienced drivers helping newer ones adjust to their important responsibility.

Another important consideration, reported in a March 21 Mirror article, is the three new Compressed Natural Gas buses joining the Amtran fleet.

Amtran is doing much right, including its expansion of service initiated during the past year. Trying to reduce or eliminate accidents is another.

Positive steps like those ongoing must continue to be pursued — winter, spring, summer and fall.