And yet, “Drive 55” was a much more justified and reasonable law than the one the petition yahoos are proposing.
Can you explain how the proposed penalties protect the children? I feel I’m missing something here.
It seems likely that more serious penalties will make drivers think twice before passing a stopped school bus. It should reduce how many buses get passed. Making bus stops safer.
It’s the same as DUI. Forty years ago it was a slap on the wrist. Stricter enforcement has reduced the number of drunks on the road.
This isn’t that unrealistic. I live/work in a school district that is top-20 in the nation by # of students. We are a suburban district with over 1300 buses. Over half the buses currently have cameras on the side that catch the license plates of people passing the bus when the lights are flashing and earn them a $150 ticket in the mail. They are hoping to have a camera on every bus in the district by the end of this school year.
Too expensive? That was the original worry, but it’s literally paying for itself. They caught 32,000 violations last year and used some of the money to buy more cameras.
A lot of districts are undertaking similar programs.
I like that solution. 
There’s more violators than I expected in one school district. It’s amazing more kids don’t get hit.
Imcreasing enforcement will certainly make bus stops safer.
People driving through green lights at street intersections are also vulnerable and generally don’t recognize the danger from people blowing through red lights. Just like kids who don’t look for traffic before crossing to the school bus, few people look for cross traffic before cruising through a green light at speed.
Tell me again why blowing through a school bus’ red lights is so different (and merits such different penalties) from blowing through a street intersection’s red light?
cameras might be an answer.
though if communities show they’re serious about these violations, sometimes they actually get results.
It’s because the school bus’ red light is an indicator that an unaccompanied, pedestrian child is likely to be actively crossing the road at the time you blow through the light.
A street intersection red light is, at best, an indication that an adult driver, operating a protective metal box, is currently allowed to cross through the intersection at the time you blow through the light.
The child is far less likely than the adult driver to be aware of the danger of their surroundings. The child is also far more likely to die as a result of the accident than the adult driver.
Me, I think all school buses should be equipped with stop signal activated cameras, and passing a school bus with the sign out should be investigated as a crime, rather than simply a cash ticket. You are literally endangering the welfare of children when you pass a school bus in this manner.
It’s 50-50 as to whether students have to cross the road at all; they may be waiting on the same side of the road as the bus (odds are even lower if route planners put some thought into where students get picked up). If they do have to cross the road, then they’re in the danger zone for less than half of the time that the red lights are flashing.
While I support stiff (not draconian) penalties for violating school bus flashing reds, I think maybe we have different definitions of “likely”.
In 2016, 800 people were killed in collisions with people who blew through red traffic lights.
Considering those numbers, and assuming your goal is to save lives (rather than simply punish individuals you regard as morally bankrupt), where do you suppose increased enforcement/penalties are likely to save the most lives?
I could see mounting forward and backward facing HD cameras on the stop sign on the buses. That way there is inarguable proof against the driver when they receive a $500 ticket in the mail.
They can then either pay the ticket or provide contact information for the person driving the vehicle if it wasn’t the registered owner.
The footage get’s downloaded when the bus get’s back to the barn, someone does a quick review and forwards the relevant data to the state PD who then mail out citations. The process could even be further streamlined by giving the bus driver a button to push to flag the stops where someone ignored the stop sign.
LINK - One viable solution.
The linked photo shows a school bus parked completely across both lanes of traffic while loading/unloading children. The only way to pass by the bus would be to ram it. This seems like it would solve a lot more problems than passing more ignorable laws.
It might help. It will probably help for accidents involving a deliberate act.
It doesn’t address drivers who are incapacitated or distracted.
What addresses the vast majority of these fatalities is the elimination of children crossing from the opposite side of the road.
I see now that there are several solutions that can be implemented locally.
The Feds can help by providing funding for traffic cameras in legacy buses. New school buses should be required to have them factory installed.
There is precedent for doing this. The NHTSA passed a regulation requiring back-up cameras in new cars. It went into effect in 2018.
I’m glad some group put up the school bus safety petition on whitehouse.gov. It raises awareness and opens a dialogue. This thread has already been illuminating. I think Congress would have a similar discussion and lean towards funding school bus cameras. Maybe 50% matching funds with the states that participate?
That’s easier to pass and less heavy-handed than a national traffic law.
None of this stops a car from hitting children.
Nothing will completely avoid the danger of children getting hit at bus stops.
All we can do is manage the problem as much as possible. Try to cut the number of infractions.
Automatically mailing $500 tickets to people caught on camera, passing a stopped school bus is a good incentive to wait patiently.
Multiple citations could cost someone their license. The state legislatures set the fine and penalties.
Some people will ignore fines and will drive without a license. There’s already laws to address that problem.
That’s simply not true. Setting up bus routes so children aren’t crossing in front of the bus would eliminate the problem.
A lot of school districts here, especially in the suburbs, have their routes set up so every kid gets off right in front of their home, on the same side of the street. Which is probably a good idea. But it still doesn’t completely solve the problem, because if the bus stops on one side of the street at one time, and on the other side of the street 20 minutes later, some kids are still going to get on or off at the wrong time (because they missed the bus the first time, or because they want to get home 20 minutes earlier, or because they want to stay on the bus 20 minutes longer to talk with their friends, or whatever).
I would just put a bigger and flashier stopping gate on the bus similar to those on railroad crossings. Plus, it seems like some of the accidents that occur have just as much to do with bad route mapping. I don’t think the vague threat of extreme punishment is really that much of a deterrent. Or, you know, just not have kids have to cross the street in the first place.
Though nothing can ever get rid of the fundamental risk of pedestrians + roadway. Our district had four high school students run over at a bus stop last month when two cars crashed into each other in the road and one spun out and plowed right into them. One of the kids has a severe brain injury. They ideally shouldn’t put school bus stops out on state highways with 50 mph speed limits, but sometimes the adjacent apartment complexes are too difficult/dangerous for the large buses to maneuver in and out of and only the smaller special ed buses do so. Nothing is perfect.
Gee whiz, can’t a guy just want to punish the morally bankrupt without being called out?
In terms of where to expend resources, I’ll note that I learned something very interesting today. There are more school buses in the country than there are stop lights. (480k vs 300k). So, if we were to ask myself where to deploy red light cameras to prevent accidents, I’d say it’s more fruitful to deploy them on the ones that are active 24/7/365 than the ones that are active 6/5/180.