www.stnonline.com
judge said the harshest punishment the driver will have to endure is “the remorse she will carry with her for the rest of her life.” North Carolina State Rep. Dale Folwell,
R-Forsyth, has been in the vanguard of stop arm violation prevention since 1999, when his 7-year-old son, Dalton, was killed by a stop arm violator in front of his home. Prosecution would have changed nothing. Folwell says he wants to eliminate the need for prosecuting stop arm violations. “Our goal is to not have to pass any
more laws because that would mean that the laws that we have already passed are changing behavior,” Folwell says. Te Nicholas Adkins School Bus Safety
Act, co-sponsored by Folwell, becomes effective Dec. 1. On Aug. 19 of this year, 6-year-old Ash-
ley Ramos-Hernandez was killed after exiting her school bus near Raleigh, N.C. Subsequent news reports said the motor- ist, an 83-year-old woman, was “distraught and overcome with sadness.” Her son is quoted as saying his mother wonders how she can go on living after killing a child. In the United States, drivers illegally pass
a school bus an estimated 500,000 times every school day. And each year roughly a dozen children, the majority from 5 to 8 years of age, succumb to these errant drivers. Legislators pass laws with stiffer penalties. Much of the general public na- tionwide, however, has charged that “stiffer penalties” are designed to generate rev- enue, not to increase child safety. Richard Friend, an Arkansas
law en-
forcement official who works the area where Isaac Bryan was killed, disagrees. “Tis is about preventing tragedies, not
about collecting money,” Friend said. “You could take every citation we’ve written and you couldn’t buy back Isaac Bryan’s life. Anyone who thinks we are writing ci- tations to raise money should view one of these crime scenes.” Jim Horton, transportation director for
the Springfield School District in Spring- field, Ore., says the issues are education and prevention. “I am a great fan of prevention because,
if you have to prosecute, something bad has already happened. Prosecution as a default strategy often runs counter to education and prevention programs.” Horton, who spent 30 years in law en-
Circle 109 on STN Product Info Card 31
forcement, says stop arm violations in his district declined by 80 to 90 percent on some routes after LED warning signs were installed on some of his district’s buses, re- placing painted “Unlawful to Pass” signs. Donna Sullivan, assistant transporta-
tion director in the Manhattan/Ogden School District in Manhattan, Kan., re- ports a 66 percent drop in violations after installing strobe lights that remain
illuminated the entire time the school bus is in operation. “We installed the strobes over the sum-
mer and noticed a dramatic decrease the first month compared to the previous two years,” says Sullivan. “We were having 15 people a day running our stop signs. I can’t say for sure it was inattention of the drivers, I just know that [stop arm violations] were reduced after the strobes were installed.” n
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