Community addresses school bus stop law breakers

School board looks to raise awareness

Next week students in the Spring-Ford Area School District, like millions of others across the country, will say goodbye to summer vacation as they step onto the bus to start the first day of school. Yet for many school officials and parents watching other motorists routinely ignore traffic laws and

speed past stopped buses picking up students, the first day of school is the start of a perennial problem that fills them with dread.

Now a movement has begun to raise community awareness about the problem before it’s too late.

“This is a national epidemic,” said school board President Tom Di Bello during Monday night’s meeting. “People are buzzing by buses all the time.”

“It’s not just a Spring-Ford problem,” said Superintendent David Goodin. “You’ve got folks not obeying traffic laws.”

One Upper Providence resident who has seen the problem first hand is Colleen Emmons. She complained to the board about how dangerous the bus stop is near her home along the 700 block of Black Rock Road during the Aug. 15 board workshop meeting. The stop, she said, is “narrow, on a blind curve and there are no sidewalks.” Almost every day she’ll watch as the bus drivers taking her sons to school are forced to lean on their horn and yell at other drivers who either ignore or don’t see the bus, or are making left turns in front of the bus. She said she’s also seen other cars driving too fast screech to a halt to avoid an accident.

“I hold my breath praying that they will stop in time,” she said.

One time a car even passed around a bus because it couldn’t stop in time, Emmons said. She wants to see something done to make sure students stay safe.

Goodin said he regularly visits bus stops personally to monitor trouble spots and see what can be done. During Monday’s meeting he said would see about identifying any data in other areas of the district that experienced similar traffic issues where cars run past the bus.

Yet there is only so much that the district or police for that matter can do. Some of the onus falls on motorists themselves to follow traffic laws.

“People don’t obey these laws and it’s a disgrace,” DiBello said Monday.

Emmons story is just an example of a nationwide issue. According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, from 2003 to 2012, 174 school-age children died in school-transportation related crashes, 55 were occupants of school transportation vehicles and 119 were pedestrians. From 2003 to 2012, both 5 to 7 and 8 to 13 age groups each had 42 (35 percent) schoolage pedestrians killed in school-transportation re- lated crashes.

The study shows in the 37 single-vehicle crashes, 39occupants — 19 drivers and 20 passengers — were killed. In the 52 multiple-vehicle crashes, 27 drivers and 40 passengers died. In the 37 sin gle-vehicle crashes, the first harmful events were as follows: striking a fixed object (22 crashes), the vehicle overturning (eight crashes), a person falling fromthe vehicle (five crashes), and collision with a non-fixed object (one crash) (i.e., pedestrian, pedal cyclist, railway vehicle, live animal, and ridden animal or animal-drawn conveyance).

In Upper Providence Township, supervisor Al Vagnozzi said the township is committed tomaking sure students are safe by ensuring proper signs are posted in areas where a school bus stops in high traffic areas and also by ensuring the police department is strictly enforcing school bus stop laws.

Upper Providence Township Police Lt. Mark Freeman said when the department receives a speeding complaint, it sends a traffic safety sergeant to either monitor the area visually or set up a device to record all traffic from every direction for up to a week. The information is then evaluated to see if there is a problemand, if so, then a patrol officer will be sent out. The devices don’t, however, take photos of drivers passing stopped school buses but an officer can be assigned to a problem area if there is a complaint.

“We consider running a bus light a very serious infraction,” Freeman said. “We have very little tolerance for that. We take reports like that seriously.”

Districts in other parts of the state, including Parkland School District in the Lehigh Valley, have introduced cameras onto the exterior stop arm of buses to catch drivers ignoring the law. Charlie Hood, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, told Sarah M. Wojcik, of The Morning Call, that while buses remain the safest mode of transportation for students, they are most vulnerable getting on and off the bus.

“Of the 20 students killed on average each year nationwide in bus-related crashes, 15 are hit in the loading zones, Hood said in the report.

His organization started collecting data on the frequency of bus stop violators in 2011 using a voluntary survey that takes an annual snapshot of the problem. In 2 015, the survey of 20 percent of the country’s bus drivers across 29 states— not including Pennsylvania— counted 75,966 violations. The orga- nization extrapolates about 13 million violations nationwide during a 180-day school year, according to the report.

“It’s unfortunately been pretty consistent over the years,” Hood said of the violations in the report. “For some of us, the numbers can be shocking, but unfortunately school transportation people see it so often they aren’t so surprised.”

The penalties if convicted for not stopping for a bus include a $250 fine, five points on a driving record and a 60-day license suspension, according to Penn DOT. The state agency provided Pennsylvania’s school bus stopping law as a reminder to motorists: • Motorists must stop at least 10 feet away from school buses that have their red lights flashing and stop arm extended. • Motorists must stop when they are behind the bus, meeting the bus or approaching an intersection where a bus is stopped. • Motorists following or traveling alongside a school bus must also stop until the red lights have stopped flashing, the stop arm is withdrawn, and all children have reached safety. • If physical barriers such as grassy medians, guide rails or concrete median barriers separate oncoming traffic from the bus, motorists in the opposing lanes may proceed without stopping. • To help people understand the law, Penn DOT’s highway safety website, www.penndot.gov/safety, offers an interactive feature illustrating Pennsylvania’s school bus stopping law to help motorists learn what to do and when to stop when approaching or travelling behind a school bus. Freeman encouraged any township residents to call police or stop by the police station to report any incidents they see. “We don’t want to see anyone hurt based on someone not stopping,” he said. “We will absolutely address that issue.” • Meanwhile in SpringFord, school officials said they will continue to spread the message to keep students safe and would continue toworkwith local police to address concerns. • “The police chief is going to contact our transportation department and have a conversation also and see what we can do working together to try to alleviate the issue as much as possible,” Di Bello said. • “Locally within our community in might behoove us to get the message out to please obey traffic laws and signs,” Goodin said. “(We’ll) try to create a higher level of community awareness for that issue.”