Tempesta says the buses often carry many more than the suggested limit of 42 passengers--and he acknowledges that this is a danger to everybody involved.

"Anything over 45 people is a lot," Tempesta says. "When you get to numbers that high and beyond, you are really jeopardizing the situation by having the potential for an accident with that many people."

Tempesta says drivers find it difficult to tell people who have been waiting for over 20 minutes that they must wait for the next bus, especially when they need to get to classes.

But the drivers are instructed to obey the official policy, which requires them to turn people away or to put the bus in park if the extra people refuse to get off the bus, he says.

While overcrowding remains a safety hazard, the shuttle service has improved in some other problems areas, including dangerous drivers.

The shuttle program is more organized than it was a few years ago when students had greater control and "things were a lot wilder," Auferio says. While student managers used to assign shifts to other students, Aufiero has taken over that responsibility and says he has added more stability to the program.

"Back then, drivers were crazy," he says. "Students were flying around in the bus and some of the drivers didn't even have valid licenses [to drive buses]."

Twohig, a senior who returned to the shuttle service after taking a year off from Harvard, says the students now have less control over daily operations than during his first few years of college. But while the shuttle system was more fun before, he says it is much safer now.

Twohig's driving adventures began the very first time he stepped inside a shuttle when his leader from the Freshman Outdoor Program, who was also in charge of driver training, took him for a ride.

"At the beginning of Freshman Week, we took a shuttle out to the Business School and he began to show me how to drive," Twohig says.

"We rode around okay for a while and finally we stopped at Baskin Robbins. Then, he suddenly looked at his watch, and said `Why don't you just drive my shift this time?' and left the bus. I wound up doing his run without having any idea where anything was," he says.

In the current shuttle program, would-be drivers are required to take six hours of training and learn the rules book, Auferio says. Only two were rejected last year.

"There's a two week waiting period for the license and then they're ready to go," he says.

But Fronhofer says he had just a little more trouble in earning his bus license. "The first time I took the test...I ran a stop sign and failed," says Fronhofer, who passed the exam on his second try.

Aside from a collision last year between a shuttle bus and a police cruiser, the shuttle drivers have avoided trouble with the police, Fronhofer says.