King explained. “The faster the car was going, the more advanced warning was given. There is a big difference in the system between a car going two miles an hour or one coming much faster, and it works with cars coming up from behind the bus as well.” As of early March, he said the system already tracked and warned bus drivers of 10 stop-arm runners. “The system is amazing. One of the drivers said it’s just like another person is sitting there with you,” he added. What do the children think of the new system? “They
caught on very quickly, since they can hear it inside the bus, too,” King said. “Of course, our drivers are tickled to death to have this excellent tool on their buses.” King admitted that other crossing technology, such as the extended stop-arms wouldn’t work well on most of the district’s narrow roads, an opinion shared by Transportation Director Jim Foley, of Albemarle County Schools in Virginia. As previously reported by School Transportation News, Foley said that six-foot stop arms would be a tight fit on narrow, one-way city streets lined with vehicles, but on a two-lane road, the district has seen a 55-percent decrease in illegal passing. Results from a 2017 stop-arm camera pilot program
prompted Manassas City Public Schools in Virginia to not only add BusPatrol stop-arm cameras but also inte- rior and rearview cameras with GPS capability as well as an emergency panic button. Andy Hawkins, the district’s executive director of finance and operations, noted that high commuter traffic flows through the city on the way to Arlington and Washington, D.C. He commented that
perhaps the biggest advantage of the new program is the customer service received. “For example, if we have an incident on the school bus, and I need to have camera footage downloaded, they hop on it. If I need to have some statistics, my account execu- tive will pull it together within an hour and send it to me,” he explained. “If I need to know which streets within our city have the most incidences, where the biggest issues are, they can tell me in a few minutes. Or if we have a problem with the money or with the police, they will come and meet face-to-face to figure this problem out.” The district then added higher resolution cameras in 2019 in all 60 buses, which resulted in the number of citations issued by law enforcement nearly doubling. “Bus drivers are very happy. They’re ecstatic about it
because they were complaining that a child was going to get hurt for years,” added Hawkins. “We used to receive complaints all the time from parents talking about how dangerous it was for their children to get off the school bus. We haven’t received any of those complaints in years.” He added that more data on illegal passing was expected this spring, as pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade stu- dents returned to school under a hybrid model on March 23, in addition to about 75 students with special needs who have already been attending in-person classes.
Laws and Voluntary Routing to Eliminate Crossing Last September, a 7-year-old girl was killed in Abilene, Kansas, by a passing motorist, prompting the House Judiciary Committee to authorize the use of stop-arm
NHTSA AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT During the STN EXPO Virtual Conference on Feb. 27, Kristin
Rosenthal, the highway safety specialist who manages the pupil transportation safety programming for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), spoke on the issue of illegal passing. She provided an update on what the federal government is doing to combat the problem. “Our mission is to save lives and prevent injuries on Ameri-
ca’s highways,” she said. “To help stop illegal passing, we have two surveys that will help us understand how to help solve the issue. One is to assess motorist’s knowledge on their state’s laws about illegally passing a stopped school bus. “The second will be conducted in two communities that will help us determine if cameras and high-visibility enforcement, along with public education, will help stop arm violations. Then a report and a guide will be generated.” Joining Rosenthal on the STN EXPO virtual session was
Keith Dreiling, the Kansas state director for pupil transpor- tation. He provided background on the 2019-2020 National School Bus Loading and Unloading Survey results that the Kansas State Department of Education released in Novem-
32 School Transportation News • APRIL 2021
ber. “We’re in our 50th year of the survey, and fatalities were down last year, in part due to COVID-19 reducing the number of days schools were open. But the industry has really made progress. When I look back, it blows my mind to look at the data from 1970 when there were 75 loading or unloading fatalities. The numbers have really come down, and I want to thank all of the people who send us data.” The survey also provides graphs with statistics on fatalities
that were caused “by own bus,” the type of bus involved, weather and road conditions, day of the week, and other fac- tors, plus a 50-year summary of data for comparison. But on a larger scale, NHTSA has been monitoring another
troubling trend. Through January, the agency found that overall fatalities re- sulting from motor vehicle crashes had increased over 13 percent from 2019, despite a 15-percent reduction in traffic tied to pandemic stay-at-home orders.
NHTSA best-practices for reducing illegal passing
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