Anger, fines follow school bus passings

Albemarle school bus drivers and parents are fed up with drivers passing buses while students are boarding, and they’re on a mission to fight back.

Using advanced global positioning system technology on buses, administrators and police are able to detect precisely when and where buses stop and whether the buses’ red lights and stop signs were used — crucial evidence in court trials.

“To me, it’s just such a safety issue,” said Jennifer Kincaid, who says a Budweiser truck recently passed a school bus that her fifth-grade daughter was boarding. “There have been so many times, especially recently, that vehicles have just driven right by the bus.”

When the weather gets warm, the number of drivers who pass stopped school buses tends to increase, said Albemarle schools Director of Transportation Josh Davis.

The school division has sent Albemarle police 37 reports during the 2009-10 school year from bus drivers whose stopped buses were passed, Davis said.

March and April have been peak months, with seven violations reported each month.

Albemarle police Cpl. Sean C. Hackney says he has caught numerous drivers passing stopped school buses and sometimes hears explanations along the lines of: “‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. It happened too fast.’”

Some of the violators are multi-tasking and say they don’t see “something as big as a school bus with flashing lights on it,” Hackney said.

“That’s kind of disturbing. … Unfortunately, if they’re not careful, they’re going to end up hitting a kid,” Hackney said. “We would just tell people that, not only are you responsible for how fast a car goes, you’re responsible for how fast a car stops. Especially when you live out on those rural roads or areas where you know there are children, you need to be prepared to come to a full stop at any time.”

In one recent case, a speeding Western Albemarle High School student slammed his vehicle into a car that was behind a stopped bus — causing his vehicle to ricochet into the school bus and end up in a driveway, Davis said. Had the child getting off of the bus departed seconds later, the child could have died, Davis said.

School bus drivers are trained to deploy yellow flashing lights while slowing. Then, red flashing lights and a stop sign are deployed as the bus halts.

County school bus driver Jim Grace said drivers should treat the yellow flashing lights the same way they would treat a yellow traffic light.

Grace said he’d like school buses to eventually be armed with cameras on the bus stop signs. But the tough economy could keep that type of equipment out of reach for many school divisions, at least for now.

The school division bought the GPS equipment last summer for about $213,000, which officials said would also help the school division ensure efficient use of the buses and allow administrators to keep tabs on the whereabouts of buses, for safety reasons.

As an additional precaution, many Albemarle bus drivers — who check for oncoming traffic — train students not to cross roads until signaled by a bus driver.

Grace said he cannot figure out how anyone would be able to justify running a school bus stop sign and “putting a young person in that danger.”

As for the beer truck driver who allegedly passed a school bus less than two weeks ago, Hackney said a traffic officer is investigating the incident.

“We do probably 30 or 40 of those per year that we receive from [the transportation department],” Hackney said. “That doesn’t account for the ones the officers actually witness themselves and write the summonses on.”

Scott Wawner, vice president of sales at Virginia Eagle Distributing LLC, said last week that he didn’t know anything about a Budweiser truck passing a school bus and called the claim “very unsubstantiated.” Since then, Wawner called Kincaid and was “apologetic,” the mother said.

Grace said bus drivers are very concerned about drivers illegally passing but they often are not able to get violators’ license plate numbers fast enough in the heat of the moment.

“I think the frustration is it happens and we just feel powerless to do anything about it,” Grace said.

Witnesses of a violation should write the driver’s license plate number and a description of both the vehicle and the driver. Witnesses should also make a record of as many details as possible, including the specifics of the violation, as well as the time, date and location. The information can be reported to Josh Davis or one of the transportation department’s supervisors at 973-5716.

“Not only do we need the vehicle license plate number, we need someone that can help us positively identify the driver,” Hackney said.

Davis said the easiest solution to avoid getting caught behind a school bus and being late for a destination is leaving a few minutes earlier.

“There’s no reason to get the blood boiling if you can leave five minutes earlier,” he said.

In one of the most recent cases, a Scottsville woman was convicted of a misdemeanor in May for passing a stopped school bus, according to court records. She was fined $50, plus court fees. The maximum penalty, in some cases, is one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.