You can watch videos online of school buses stopped to let their children out. The stop sign on the side of the bus is out, the strobe on top if the bus is flashing, and the doors are open. People in their ignorance still pass the bus while it's stopped, letting your children out. If you watch the videos, you will see that there are quite a few near misses from cars hitting the kids. School bus passing
I don't know if it's only an issue of sheer ignorance, or is it the fact that more and more people don't know the laws? Do we have drivers out there that can't read our English language? That is still no excuse, the red and white octagonal sign is impossibly hard not to recognize, it's in just about every country, and you don't need to read it to understand it's meaning.
I have an idea, we retrofit all school buses with a photo radar stop camera that activates when the stop sign on the bus is out, if you pass it, it will take a photo of your vehicle and you will be fined for failure to stop for a school bus, not for failure to to stop at a stop sign. Your first offence is 400.00, the second time it's 2000.00 That will put a stop to the people passing school buses that are letting children off.
While I'm on the topic of school buses there is another issue that needs to be brought to attention.
It is the law to wear a seat belt in all vehicles, and up to a certain age you have to use a booster seat belt, but not on school buses. Does this seem incredibly stupid to everyone else besides me? There should be seat belts on every bus, let alone just school buses. How about the buses that take people long distances to work once a week? All vehicles should have a seat belt. ALL of them. I wonder how many more people would have survived the Humboldt crash had they been wearing safety belts?
I hate wearing a seat belt, but I grew up in an era where it wasn't a law yet. I wear my seat belt, hate it or not, it gets put on. (Mostly because the alarm drives me nuts) but I still put it on, and nowadays I feel like something is missing if I don't have it on. It is a proven fact that seat belts actually have saved more lives than not wearing one. If you have any arguments against this fact you are seriously uninformed and will lose said argument.
Stop for the school bus, get some seat belts in those things, and put yours on. Enough Said.
Scott Goerz
