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

ACROSS WISCONSIN — The first days of school can be deadly in Wisconsin, 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 Wisconsin, seat belts are not required for busses. School bus stop-sign cameras are not required and there is no law explicitly allowing local governments and schools to ticket drivers that illegally pass stopped school busses.

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.

Wisconsin requires drivers to stop at least 20 feet away from a school bus whenever its red lights are flashing. Drivers have to obey this law whenever the bus is on their side of the road, the other side of the road, or at an upcoming intersection, but not on a divided highway, according to School Training Solutions, an online training program for people who work for school districts across the country.

After the school bus turns its lights off, drivers must then watch for children on the road and wait to go until kids clear the right-of-way, according to School Training Solutions.

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.