Back To School Bus Safety: When NC Drivers Need To Stop

NORTH CAROLINA — The first days of school can be deadly in North Carolina, and across the nation, as motorists re-familiarize themselves with laws requiring them to halt when the school bus stop arm is extended.

An average of seven school-age children die every year in school bus crashes, but nearly three times that number are killed waiting for or getting on or off the bus, according to School Transportation News.

In North Carolina, school buses are allowed to use stop-arm cameras to combat drivers who pass illegally.

States across the country have mostly focused on two policies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — allowing school districts to use bus cameras to help catch motorists illegally passing stopped school buses, and requiring seat belts.

Here’s what North Carolina requires, according to School Training Solutions, an online training program for people who work for school districts across the country:

• Drivers must stop and not attempt to pass a school bus when its mechanical stop signal or flashing red lights is displayed.
• Drivers may proceed when the mechanical stop signal is withdrawn, the flashing red lights are turned off and the bus begins to move.
• Where there is a divided highway of four lanes or more with a separating median or center turn lane, the only drivers required to stop for a stopped school bus are those in traffic lanes following the bus.

In Indiana, more than 200 law enforcement organizations will take part in the “SAVE blitz” operation, short for Stop Arm Violation Enforcement when the upcoming school year starts. Extra patrols across the Hoosier State will be on a specific lookout for bus stop-arm violators, the Journal-Gazette newspaper reported.

Devon McDonald, of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, said speeding around, or ignoring, a bus stop arm is “reckless,” in a statement reported by the Journal-Gazette.

“It puts everyone on the road at risk, including children, and has to stop,” McDonald said.

School Transportation News reports an average of 19 kids are killed every year getting on or off the bus, while about seven a year die in school bus crashes.

SEE ALSO: What To Do When A Bus Stop Arm Is Extended

Most of the victims are between five and seven years old, according to Stanford Children’s Health, and hit in “danger zones,” the area within 10 feet in front of, behind, and to either side of a bus.

Less than three years ago, 12 children were killed and another 47 injured while getting on and off school buses from August 2018 to March 2019.

Among them were three Rochester, Indiana, siblings who died in 2018 while waiting for their school bus, which authorities said had its stop arm extended and lights flashing. Just a day later, a 9-year-old boy in Tupelo, Mississippi, was killed while crossing a highway trying to get to a school bus.

A year earlier, school bus drivers across the United States saw nearly 78,000 drivers illegally passing school buses in one day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“Motorists need to pay attention to what's going on around them," National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services President Michael LaRocco told School Transportation News after the back-to-back days of children’s deaths at school bus stops.

SEE ALSO:

• Hospitalizations Spike In NC As Number Of New COVID Cases Mount
• Good News: Working-Mom Receives $1K Tip At NC Waffle House
  
• NC To Require Vaccination Proof From State Workers: Gov. Cooper
• 18 North Carolina Hospitals Named Best In State: US News