keeping students safe.” Gardian Angel started as a sketch of a lighting system and is now approved in half of the U.S. as additional school bus lighting. Founder Steven Gardner and son Andrew, the head of marketing, are very involved in helping the nation’s leaders realize what happens at school bus stops. “My father and I are very proud to have been involved
in improving pupil transportation safety. When the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), was inves- tigating the October 2018 accident in Rochester, Indiana, they came across our product,” Andrew Gardner recalled. “They contacted my father, and we had a meeting in July 2019. I had no idea what, exactly, the NTSB would want for the meeting, so I collected everything I could: Our data, testing, and various state correspondences. We are so happy that we could help, and that this bill will help students across the nation be transported more safely.”
Opposition to Illegal Passing Enforcement “We feel that student transportation is remarkably safe
already, and school transportation fatalities are rare,” said Shelia Dunn, communications director for the National Motorist Association (NMA). She referenced a NHTSA study that cited 1,344 fatal-
ities of all ages occurring in and around school buses between 2004 and 2013. The figure accounts for just 0.40 percent of the total number of annual traffic fatalities during that time period, and on average 12 school-aged children died in these incidents. “Furthermore, two-thirds of those fatalities were
caused by the actual school bus or a vehicle acting as the school bus,” she added. “Therefore, each state had, on av- erage, one child fatality approximately every four years that was caused by a vehicle passing a school bus.” She also noted that according to the Kansas State De- partment of Education’s annual School Bus Loading and Unloading National Survey, school buses were responsi- ble for 57 percent of school-age pedestrian fatalities that occurred from 1970 to 2014, while other vehicles were responsible 39 percent of time. Dunn added that video cameras cannot stop distracted
drivers, and she opined that ticketing drivers by an automat- ed camera after the fact cannot stop these incidents from occurring. Instead, she said a federal review should uncover poorly written laws and a lack of public awareness. ●
Read the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill at
stnonline.com/go/cz.
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44 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2022
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