The Dangers Of Drivers Not Being Careful Around School Buses

For many students in Maryland and throughout the U.S., their trip to and from school involves riding a school bus. This is generally a very safe mode of travel.

However, children can be vulnerable to harm when heading to or departing from their school bus. This is underscored by the fact that most school-bus-related deaths, around 7 out of every ten according to National Safety Council estimates, happen outside of a bus.

Unfortunately, recent news has seen tragic examples of the potential for deadly accidents to occur outside of school buses. For one, there was the recent crash in Indiana in which three students were killed.

One of the things that can create big dangers for students is when drivers don’t obey the traffic rules related to school buses. This includes the rules requiring drivers to stop when a bus has its stop arm out. There is the potential for students to get hit by such drivers when entering or leaving a school bus.

So, one would hope all drivers in Maryland would carefully follow the stop-arm rules. Unfortunately, it appears reality is pretty far off from this hope. A survey suggests that the state sees thousands of violations of these rules a day during the school year. In this survey, school bus drivers were asked whether they had seen any such violations one day in April of this year. Over 3,800 stop arm violations were reported for that day.

What do you think it will take to get more drivers in the state to be vigilant about obeying school bus stop-arm rules?