Kent Drivers Ignore School Bus Laws

by Justin McKinney and Jacob Runnels

 

 

At the Kent City Schools Department of Transportation, the bus drivers there consider themselves as one big family and each child on the buses as their own.

 

Wendy Davis, a Kent City Schools bus driver, said she’s noticed on her pickup and drop-off routes an increase in “close calls,” which are instances where a car doesn’t stop for a school bus’s stop arm and nearly hits a child who’s crossing the street. She said, in her 14 years of driving school buses, this is the worst case of close calls she’s seen.

 

“This has probably been the first time in my life where I go home with anxiety attacks because… I don’t want to see any child hurt,” she said. “When you have a close call, it’s very heart-wrenching. We take our jobs [seriously because] we become a family to those children on the bus.”

 

She said the increase in close calls is mostly caused by the recent Summit Street construction project closing off large roads, such as Loop and Summit, which leads to drivers taking unfamiliar detours, such as the intersection at Kimberly Drive and Horning Road. She said she sees the new influx of drivers paying more attention to their phones than the road and others are ill-informed about the law.

 

Davis said there was an incident March 16 where a child was almost hit by a car because a driver misinterpreted her hand signals. When she was waving for the child to cross the street, the driver mistook it as a sign to allow the driver to pass. This led to her honking her horn at the driver and warning the child before they were hit.

 

She said the heaviest traffic usually happens on Wednesday afternoons when children are getting out of school. She said she usually has a driver passing her bus’s stop arm every day.

“It’s dangerous and it’s been a spike since the [Summit Street] construction [began]… [and] the traffic flow is crazy over what it used to be prior to [the construction]” she said. “Sometimes the children make mistakes and sometimes I make mistakes, but those drivers have to stop.”

 

Jim Soyars, director of business services and interim transportation supervisor for Kent City Schools, said this is a problem commonly seen “especially around campus with the Summit Street detour” because of drivers going routes they don’t normally use. He said the Department of Education works with the police to send an officer to investigate areas with multiple reports of cars passing stopped school buses.

 

“We’re seeing a spike during this construction project…because people are driving on roads they normally wouldn’t drive on,” he said. “Maybe they’re not as much paying attention to the school bus and more paying attention to where they’re going.”

 

Soyars said the city has also helped by following up on issues, as well as the police staying on top of the problem.

 

He said the bus drivers are always instructing students how to cross the street and what the bus driver’s hand signals mean. He said because the drivers have to make their routes “as efficient as we can,” drivers can’t “go up and down all the streets twice so we can pick up everybody on their home’s sides,” so crossing the street is a must for some children.

 

“The driver uses a hand signal to let them know—after they’ve checked to make sure that it’s safe—to go, but if somebody then comes through, they beep the horn and the student is supposed to look for danger… and then to the driver for further instructions,” he said. “But things can change in a second and that’s where it gets difficult.”

 

As well as drivers not knowing what to do with a stopped school bus, the Department of Education also has problems with reporting these kinds of cases when it comes to routes in Franklin Township, where the Kent Police Department has no jurisdiction. This is the case for the intersection at Kimberly Drive and Horning Road.

 

Lieutenant Michael Lewis of the Kent Police Department said this kind of jurisdiction would fall on the Portage County Sheriff’s office, so none of Kent’s police officers would “necessarily have the jurisdiction to deal with.” However, he said anyone is able to report an incident of a car passing by a stopped school bus.

 

“I think we’ve all been in situations where—we see somebody who is speeding or runs past a stop sign or a red light—you say to yourself, ‘where’s a cop where you need them?’,” he said. “If a normal driver or a citizen observer would see that, they can write down the license plate of the vehicle and the physical description of the driver, report it to the police and we can investigate it up to and including a citation.”

 

He said, while it “carries a little more weight being a school bus driver” to report these crimes, it “certainly would be beneficial” to have any other witnesses present.

Lewis said this kind of crime would be considered a moving violation, a minor misdemeanor violation which would come with fines, court costs and points on the offender’s license. He said the fine can be “up to $150,” and around $90 in court costs. 

 

He said drivers caught with these moving violations don’t have to show up to court unless the moving violation happened either in a school zone or with a stopped school bus.

 

“It’s not as simple as running a stop sign, running a red light or any other common speeding violation,” he said. “A judge wants to hear from you and see you in person… to ask for your justification for doing so.”

 

Lewis said the best way to combat this problem would be to educate people more about the law and how people are allowed to or not allowed to pass a stopped school bus. He also said enforcement of this law when there are no officers near stopped school buses is important too.

 

[pullquote]“Just because we’re out of sight doesn’t mean we’re out of mind,” he said. “Just because we didn’t witness a violation doesn’t mean you’re not going to get a ticket. We can still follow-up and investigate.”[/pullquote]

 

As for Davis, she said she’s doing her best to keep the children who ride her bus safe.

 

“If I can get a full license plate number… and if I can identify the person in the vehicle then I can report it to the police station,” she said. “Slow down, get off the phone and pay attention.”