Not stopping for school bus stop signs big problem

School buses outside Grant Elementary School. Officials hope that greater awareness of the human costs of not stopping will lead to improved abidance of the law. (Zach Miners/The Glenrock Independent photo)

By: 
Zach Miners, zach@glenrockind.com

By Zach Miners

zach@glenrockind.com

 

Laurie Bartling, 14, was not feeling very well on the morning of Dec. 7, 1975. Her mother encouraged her to consider staying home from school, but Laurie decided to tough it out and go anyway.

She was a freshman at Sidney High School in Sidney, Nebraska.

Her school bus arrived and as she crossed the street to get on, a driver on the street struck Laurie. He did not stop for the bus.

Laurie died two days later. 

“It’s hard to talk about,” Converse County School District #1 Transportation Director John Bartling said, who was Laurie’s double first cousin. The two of them were very close.

“I don’t know if the pain ever eases,” he said.

That pain, however, may also have a positive side, as it appears to be fueling a passion in Bartling, 45 years later, to ensure that today’s children are safe and don’t get hurt traveling to and from school.

Unfortunately, many motorists still don’t stop when the stop signs swing out on school buses. And as National School Bus Safety Week approaches on Oct. 19-23, Bartling and other transportation officials in Converse County are calling attention to what they consider to be a continual problem: Drivers and motorists running the stop signs installed on the sides of school buses.

“It’s a problem here,” Converse County School District #2 Transportation Secretary Patricia Rich said on Sept. 2.

“Just this morning, it happened in front of the middle school,” she said.

In Glenrock, drivers run the stop signs an average of two to three times per week, Rich said, either in front of the schools or on other roads like Route 95.

Commonly, she said, it is actually the parents who run the stop signs, who are in a hurry to either drop their kids off at school or pick them up.

It tends to happen the most during the beginning of the school year, when drivers are not used to stopping for the buses, she said, or in the spring after the roads have been cleared of snow and people are driving faster.

“It’s worth stopping for a few seconds or a minute, when a kid’s life hangs in the balance,” she stressed.

It even happened to Rich last year one time when she was driving a bus. A car came around from behind the bus and drove right past it, she said, when the stop sign was out.

“I honked the horn for the kid not to move, and the car just kept going,” she said.

The numbers show that the trend is not changing that much. In Glenrock, the district recorded 20 such violations for the 2018-2019 school year and 25 violations for the 2019-2020 school year, according to Rich.

In Douglas, officials at Converse County School District #1 receive reports of drivers running the signs, on average, at least several times per month, Transportation Secretary Kathleen Larsen said.

For the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years – the two most recent years for which full data is available – Douglas school officials prosecuted practically the same number of stop sign violators in each year: 33 and 32, respectively.

The incidences are not limited to a particular street or area, or even morning or afternoon.

“It’s everywhere,” Larsen lamented.

“The signs are there for a reason,” she said. “Drivers may not see children walking around the bus.”

As of Sept. 6, officers at the Douglas Police Department have already written four citations for violations this school year alone, according to DPD Chief of Police Todd Byerly.

Technology, legislation and steep fines have sought to mitigate the problem. In 2014, Wyoming became the first state to require that all public school buses have cameras, beginning with the 2016-2017 school year.

John Bartling’s passion helped to enact those changes, after he demonstrated an early camera setup he devised himself to Wyoming State Sen. Jim Anderson.

The cameras help officials and the police identify the motorists who run the signs. The fine for not stopping is $450.

Officials hope that greater awareness of the human costs of not stopping will lead to improved abidance of the law.

“It we could keep one death from happening,” Bartling said, “it’s worth the money spent.”

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