Nationwide, 5 were killed at school bus stops this fall — how safe are Whatcom kids?
In a trend that could have deadly consequences for children, more Whatcom County drivers are speeding past school buses with their red lights flashing and their stop-sign swing arms extended.
“I think distracted driving is a big issue. More now than five years ago,” said Rae Anne Thon, transportation director for Bellingham Public Schools, which has 60 drivers covering 55 routes that carry 7,000 students daily over the district’s 98 square miles.
Thon said in a recent interview with The Bellingham Herald that she’s concerned by several high-profile incidents nationwide since school started this fall.
Among them, five children were killed at school bus stops in three states from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, according to a CNN report.
Several other cases of drivers flagrantly ignoring stopped buses recently were captured on video and shared widely online.
“If you spent two minutes Googling, you’d see that it’s an important issue,” said Mark Dennis, who is regional transportation coordinator for the Northwest Educational Service District serving 35 school districts in Snohomish, Skagit, Island, San Juan and Whatcom counties.
“It’s statistically safer to transport kids in a bus, as opposed to driving them to school,” Dennis said in an interview with The Herald. “But outside the bus, it’s a different story. It becomes problematic.”
That’s mainly for three reasons, Thon said: Drivers are distracted, they’re unsure of the law, or they’re in a hurry.
“I would hope that it’s not because they don’t care,” she said.
Jeffrey Lustick of Bellingham said in an email that just Thursday he felt the rage of a driver who didn’t want to stop for a school bus in the Birchwood area.
“I stopped, but the guy behind me was not paying attention, and he slammed on his brakes,” Lustick wrote. “He then honked at me and gave me the middle finger. The child getting on the bus was taking his or her time and his mom was carefully and safely helping him board the bus. All the while, that driver behind me was losing his mind.”
Nationwide problem
Whatever the reason, drivers illegally passing school buses is a nationwide problem, according to the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, whose 2018 survey of school bus drivers in 38 states found 83,944 illegal passes on a single day — down slightly from 85,279 in 2013.
A 1997 survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed 99 percent of drivers agree that it’s unsafe to pass a school bus with its red lights flashing.
But a recent petition on the White House’s “We The People” platform urging U.S. government action failed to get enough signatures.
And in an effort to get drivers to change their behavior, the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island recently toughened its laws to include a three-month license suspension and a $5,000 fine.
Drivers cited
Thon, who started as a substitute driver in Bellingham 20 years ago, said drivers who pass school buses illegally can be cited by police if the bus driver gets the offending driver’s license-plate number.
She said 97 referrals were sent to the Bellingham Police Department last year.
Bellingham Police Lt. Claudia Murphy said officers wrote 26 tickets in 2017 for overtaking or meeting a school bus and no tickets for school bus stop-sign violators that were reported by bus drivers.
Murphy said officers are working with the district on addressing the discrepancy between suspected violations and violations that can be proven.
“What I saw mostly is that not sufficient information was provided by the bus driver for the officer to be able to write a ticket,” Murphy said.
Sgt. Carr Lanham, who works the traffic division, said it’s often difficult to ticket a violator based on information a school bus driver is able to provide.
“We get referrals on a regular basis,” Lanham said in an interview Friday. “Sometimes, we get enough information to find and cite the driver, but most of the time we don’t.”
Dennis, a former Washington State Patrol officer, said 215 school bus stop-sign violations were recorded last May 3 during the annual count in his region’s area of 35 school districts in five counties.
Statewide, school bus drivers reported 1,488 bus stop-sign violations in the program coordinated through the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
“There should be an assumption on the driver’s part that if there are students on board, then that bus will be stopping,” Dennis said.
Nooksack safety
Dennis said a few Washington school districts, including Seattle and Marysville, recently installed side-facing cameras to catch violators.
Nooksack Valley Schools recently bought one bus with two outside-mounted cameras and a DVR to catch violators, said Chris Haugen, the district’s transportation supervisor and former chief of police in Sumas.
Those cameras haven’t recorded any violations so far, “which is a good thing,” Haugen said in an interview with The Herald.
But it’s still a problem — enough that Haugen has sought extra patrols from police in Everson, Sumas, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol during weekday afternoons — when statistics show that most violations occur.
At $419, “it’s an expensive ticket,” said Cmdr. Mark Thomas of the Marysville Police Department.
“I do think enforcement in and of itself makes an impact,” Thomas said in an interview. “(But) honestly we prefer education over enforcement.”
Lanham agreed, saying that the best approach to solving the problem is to combine education with enforcement.
“We’re doing this to keep kids safe,” he said. “With the cameras, it helps the bus driver to document the vehicle. It’s a good enforcement tool.”
Marysville cameras
Traci Tobler, transportation manager for Marysville School District 25, said their camera program started in 2017 after Marysville Police approached school officials about a cooperative effort to increase awareness and reduce violations.
“They said, ‘We see that they’re working in other parts of the country — what do you guys think?’ “ Tobler said in an interview.
“We’ve had those buses in areas where we’ve had the most reports of violations,” Tobler said. “I think that violations have started to slow down.”
Tobler said she thinks confusion about the law played a role in many of the violations.
“(Drivers are) still confused. But now they’re confused on the side of safety,” Tobler said, adding drivers often stop when they don’t need to.
Thon said that catching the violators isn’t as important as ensuring the safety of students when a driver speeds past illegally.
Safety is No. 1
“There are many more instances than what drivers are able to document,” Thon said. “(But) the driver’s No. 1 goal is the safety of the child.”
She said that when a bus stops to allow students on or off, the drivers are trained to check ahead and in their mirrors for approaching traffic, then make eye contact with the student.
Students are taught to wait until the driver makes eye contact and nods, signaling them to move.
“It’s a continual training and a reminder to our students,” Thon said.
Bellingham school buses each have two cameras, mounted inside the bus to monitor student behavior.
Several new buses were bought with funds from a 2016 levy that raised $4.4 million for Bellingham schools over two years, and additional bus garage funds were sought in the $155 million bond issue that voters approved in February 2018.
“It’s possible” that any new buses the district buys could have stop-arm cameras, Thon said. “Our focus was dealing with issues inside the bus and dealing with having safe buses on the road. Our focus this round has been audio and video inside. Will we be going to (cameras) in the future? We could,” she said.
Tobler said with almost two full school years in operation, the Marysville program is a success.
“I think it’s working,” she said. “Our drivers love it. Parents really appreciate the system. They want the driver focused on their kids.”
Scary moments
Whether the offending driver is caught or ticketed, a near-collision involving a student takes a toll on the school bus driver, Thon said.
“If a driver has had a close call they will come in and talk. It rattles them,” Thon said. “These incidents are so traumatic and cause fear. We work so hard to keep our students safe.”
“There have been close calls,” she said, but no students have been injured at a bus stop in the 20 years that Thon has been with the district.
Thon’s personal horror story occurred several years ago as she dropped a young student on the side of a rural road.
She saw the lights of a truck approaching, but it was far away and she opened the bus door.
But as she checked her mirror a second time, the truck — which she later learned had lost its brakes — sped past at more than 35 mph on the right shoulder, past the door.
Luckily, Thon had just enough time to reach out and snag the child’s backpack.
“There would’ve been a bad outcome,” Thon said. “That student was on the bottom step. That is by far my most scary moment.”
When to stop
▪ Drivers always must stop if they’re behind a bus and going in the same direction when the red lights flash and the stop paddle extends.
▪ Drivers always must stop if they are going in the opposite direction as the bus on a two-lane road with one lane in each direction.
▪ Drivers don’t have to stop if they are going in the opposite direction on a road with more than two lanes — including a turn lane — or a road divided by a median.
Source: Washington State Patrol
The use of Bellingham bus bonds was corrected Dec. 21, 2018.
This story was originally published December 17, 2018 at 5:00 AM.
