the country that fail to distinguish between the bus stop and the waiting area across the street. Further, upon alighting in Baltimore, students are required to walk alongside the
❝
Just the same, the legislatures in these
states have established standards that have removed any incentive for a school district or contractor to express or articulate any
By far, the worst liability abuses in crossing incidents occur in 1-percent states. ❞
bus to the rear and wait there until the bus departs and vanishes over the horizon be- fore crossing. With the school bus not even on the scene when the student crosses to or from the stop, this school district feels com- pletely insulated from any remote liability. I am not citing these differences to pur-
posely embarrass or denigrate any members of these five states’ pupil transportation communities, many of whom have devoted their lives to student safety in pupil trans- portation service. Te vast majority care deeply about crossing safety, even without any accountability for it.
concern for crossing safety and have en- abled them to ignore implementing any measures remotely related to it by which they might be held accountable. Because school bus crossing safety is a mere speck on the radar of a 1-percent state’s impact on civil law, there is little hope for change. One might argue that, given the cur-
rent political climate in which any form of accountability or justice against large corpo- rations, insurance companies and financial institutions is virtually non-existent at the executive and legislative levels (particu- larly in Washington, D.C.), and where the
Supreme Court is currently weighted heav- ily against it as well, the law-of-the-land for comparative negligence in 1-percent states weighs heavily against the last remaining line of defense for accident victims: personal in- jury attorneys. Tis reality is not a blanket condemnation
of this approach toward comparative negli- gence, and as a historical matter, it evolved, understandably, as a response to a number of obscenely-excessive damage awards, par- ticularly in the area of medical malpractice. However, when it comes to school bus crossing safety, the safety of our “precious cargo” residing in these states is left to the individuals within their respective pupil transportation communities who exercise safety measures simply out of concern and decency, even while they and their school districts are not held accountable for it. ■
Einstein is an expert witness and designer of paratransit, school bus and transit systems. Contact him at
einstein@transalt.com.
See Us At Booth # 203 78 School Transportation News Magazine July 2011
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