This is an action of tort brought by an eight-year-old child and his father for injuries sustained by the child on a school bus owned by the defendant and operated by one of its employees, a regular driver for that school year with twenty-three years’ experience. All of his passengers were elementary school children, kinder *554 garten through the sixth grade. The child (Alfred) was one of a group of twenty-five children being driven home from school. The trip was uneventful until the bus negotiated a right turn at an intersection while proceeding at a speed of between five and ten miles an hour. The road there was level, free of holes and obstructions. There was no change of speed, sudden application of brakes or unusual swerving, although there was some testimony from passengers that the bus seemed to hit a bump. The child was kneeling on the back seat of the bus facing toward the rear with third grade classmates on either side of him. As the bus was turning right, Alfred somehow hit his mouth on the top of the back of a seat located eight to ten feet forward of where he had been kneeling. Alfred fell to the floor. As he was being assisted to the driver, a young girl, otherwise unidentified, said, "Alfred hurt his mouth jumping around.” The bus driver was permitted to testify to this comment.
Both the plaintiffs and the defendant claimed a jury trial. The case was referred to a master who found no negligence on the part of the defendant. The plaintiffs filed several objections to the master’s report. Their motion to strike the report was denied and the case was tried to a jury who returned a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiffs seasonably appealed from the entry of judgment for the defendant.
The plaintiffs claim error in: (1) the inadequacy of the judge’s instructions to the jury on the bus company’s duty to supervise the children on the bus; (2) allowing the bus driver to testify to the comment of the girl following Alfred’s injury; and (3) the exclusion of evidence proffered by the plaintiffs that within several weeks after the accident adult monitors were placed by the bus company on its school buses to supervise the children, that evidence having been offered to show "the feasibility of safety precautions which could have been taken, which were taken.”
*555 We conclude that the judge’s instructions to the jury on the question of the bus company’s negligence were inadequate. The plaintiffs sought to recover on two theories. First, that the driver’s negligent operation of the bus caused Alfred’s injury; and secondly, that the bus company was negligent in failing to provide adequate supervision of the children. In the course of his charge the judge instructed the jury several times in substance that if they should find that the driver was not negligent they were to return a verdict for the defendant. However, these instructions discounted the plaintiffs’ second theory of recovery, that of inadequate supervision.
While the judge, in a supplementary instruction requested by the plaintiffs, added that the jury could consider whether there was proper supervision on the bus,
2
we do not think that this supplementary instruction sufficed to offset the earlier instructions which inadequately described the possible scope of the defendant’s negligence. The bus company owed Alfred "an onerous duty to protect ... [him] from foreseeable harm.”
Brown
v.
Knight,
*556 We turn to two evidentiary problems which are likely to arise in the course of a new trial. Apart from these, the plaintiffs’ other assertions of error lack substance and we decline to pass upon them.
1. There was no error in allowing the bus driver to testify to the statement made by the young girl as Alfred was being brought to the front of the bus after the accident. The judge admitted the statement as part of the res gestae. The plaintiffs argue that the girl’s statement was inadmissible claiming that in this jurisdiction a statement must be precisely contemporaneous with the underlying events to be within the res gestae exception to the hearsay rule. See
Rankin
v.
Brockton Pub. Mkt., Inc.,
2. The plaintiffs challenge the judge’s exclusion of evidence that, following the accident, adult monitors were placed on the school buses to supervise the children. The plaintiffs contend that this evidence was admissible on the question of the feasibility of furnishing such supervision. The general rule is, of course, that evidence of post-accident safety improvements is not admissible as evidence of negligence. See
doCanto
v.
Ametek, Inc.,
The judge may properly exclude such evidence where in the exercise of his discretion he concludes that the jury would be likely to infer negligence therefrom.
Boeing Airplane Co.
v.
Brown,
The judgment is reversed and the verdict is set aside.
So ordered.
Notes
The statement was: "You may or may not want to take into consideration a circumstance I may not have mentioned.... You may also consider whether there was proper supervision on the bus, considering the number of children and whether or not that renders it as a circumstance in determining the Defendant’s negligence.”
The judge denied the plaintiffs’ request for additional instructions on the supervision issue. The defendant contended and the judge ruled *556 that the plaintiffs’ case was defective in not establishing that the bus company rather than the city school system was responsible for supervision. However, the fact that Alfred was in the immediate custody of the bus company imposed a duty upon it to anticipate foreseeable injury and to take adequate precautions to prevent it. See Brown v. Knight, supra. If that responsibility had in some way been assumed by the school system, the burden was on the bus company to prove it. See Prosser, Torts § 33, at 176-177 (4th ed. 1971).