ANALYSIS At the rudimentary level, where most cross- Directing the
Students Across By Ned Einstein
ing procedures are executed, school bus drivers are supposed to “direct” the students across the roadway when they are certain that either the traffic has been stopped in both directions or it is so distant (if even visible) that the students could easily complete their crossing before any oncoming vehicles reach the bus. And, of course, the stopped school bus should first have its red flashers and stop arm engaged as a “fail safe.” In most states, this procedure takes the form
of alighting the students, having them queue at the far end of the crossing control guard (for those buses that have them) or roughly 10 feet in front of the bus, at the curb or on the road shoulder aligned with the curb-side of the bus. A few states go further. In Rhode Island, every bus transporting K-8 students must have an at- tendant on board to cross them. Meanwhile, in California, the driver must escort them across. But even where these higher standards are in place, the rudimentary execution of procedures is sometimes not enough. In California, a driver transporting a kinder-
gartner and his third-grade brother stopped to cross the two students at an un-signalized loca- tion along a two-lane, high-speed, rural roadway. After engaging his flashers and stop arm, the driver alighted with both students, holding each of their hands. Tis group then walked forward to the outer edge of the crossing control guard and was about to enter the roadway, when the kindergartner broke free from the driver, dashed into the roadway, and was struck and killed in- stantly by a pickup truck approaching the bus from the rear — from a position where neither the driver nor his students nor the approaching motorist could see one another since the bus formed a sight-line blockage. When the inevitable lawsuit ensued, one fact
that emerged was that the kindergartner had never done anything like this before and had a history of impeccable behavior, obedience and cooperation with his bus driver. However, two fellow drivers testified to a different approach to crossing: Tey did not alight with the stu- dents but, instead, left them standing inside the bus at the top of the stairwell, peering out the windshield, while the drivers stepped out into the roadway to check for traffic. When all traffic had stopped or was too far away to comprise a threat, these drivers then signaled the stu- dents to alight. Te drivers then checked once again when the students stood at the end of the crossing guard, then directed them to cross
82 School Transportation News Magazine July 2010
with the drivers — both of whom first peered out beyond the street-side of the bus to make sure, yet again, that oncoming vehicles in the bus’ direction had either stopped (or remained stopped) or were too far away to matter. Tis approach was so far superior to the gen-
eral approach employed by the driver whose student was killed in the incident
that the
case was settled for roughly $6.5 million, even though what the driver in question did was rel- atively consistent with the “industry standard” in California, an important concept in law- suits. Unfortunately, the jurors considered this industry standard primitive compared to the procedures articulated by the school district’s two other drivers and penalized the school dis- trict for employing it.
APPLICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS In most states, drivers or attendants do not
escort the students across. Instead, the students typically alight, walk to a point along the curb roughly 10 feet in front of the bus (or to the end of the crossing control guard when the bus has one), look toward the windshield, and await the driver’s signal for them to cross. Obviously, the driver’s view of vehicles approaching from behind is derived from his or her view of the street-side, exterior, flat, rear-view mirror. Tis view is more than adequate to perceive vehicles that have come to a stop behind the bus, but they are not terribly helpful in picking up an approaching vehicle perhaps 1,000 feet behind it. Tis assumes that the road segment behind the bus was straight for 1,000 feet. In many or most states, the sole criteria for the location of a bus stop is that it be located between two, 300-foot-long stretches of straight roadway. But where a 50 mph roadway (typical of rural arterial streets) curves 300 feet behind the bus, an approaching vehicle traveling at the speed limit is moving roughly 75 feet per second and will reach the bus from a position out-of-sight to the driver peering through his mirrors in four seconds. So when not seeing any vehicles behind his bus, the driver directs the students to begin crossing. A vehicle “just around the bend” will be upon them also in four seconds — almost perfectly timed to collide with them since, in these same four seconds, the students would likely have been able to walk into the travel lane adjacent to the stopped bus. While this precise scenario may not be so common, the relationship between the oncoming vehicle and students’ positions need not be so exact for
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