School Bus Safety Hearing was Awesome!  The Senate Transportation Committee held a riveting meeting on Tuesday on the issue of school bus safety and the plague of stop-arm violations that threaten the safety of students throughout Minnesota.  The hearing featured a number of videos taken from school bus cameras that show serial stop-arm violations, some of which almost killed students boarding the bus.  Those videos will be linked in the news stories I am including in this entry.

The testimony provided by transportation directors, bus contractors, and bus drivers was extremely compelling.  Jim Perrotti--a school bus driver for the Zumbrota-Mazeppa school district--was direct and emotional when describing the near-miss of a student by a speeding driver who ignored an extended stop-arm.  Video of that incident is included in the story below.  There was also testimony from a group from Paynesville regarding an incident where a semi-truck passed a bus on the right--the side of the bus where students enter the vehicle--when a student was boarding (also featured in a video below).  Edina transportation director David White described a recent incident when a student was hit by a driver ignoring an extended stop-arm.  The student survived, but did sustain injuries.

Senator Rich Draheim is the author of SF 1050, a bill that would appropriate $50,000 for the creation of a school bus stop-arm awareness program through the development of a set of public service announcements aimed at educating drivers on this important issue.  There was $40,000 for this purpose in the 2018 mega-ginormous thousand-page supplemental funding and policy bill that was vetoed by Governor Dayton and hopefully the supplemental funding and policy bills will be constructed in a way that will make gubernatorial approval less complicated.

I have worked with the student transportation industry for over 20 years and I can say that the entire industry is gratified by the interest shown over the past few sessions on the issue of school bus safety and in particular, the stop-arm violation issue.  There are over 100,000 stop-arm violations each year in Minnesota, but only a small fraction of those are prosecuted due to the difficulty of getting license plate numbers on the offending vehicles.  Enhanced technology and the installation of cameras on stop-arms would help with that, but a comprehensive driver-education effort may yield even better results.  I don't know if anything can be done about driver arrogance, but an education program would help with driver ignorance.  Hopefully, the House Transportation Committee will take up the companion to SF 1050--HF 1010 authored by Representative Alice Hausman--and fund this important program.

Here is news coverage of yesterday's hearing.  Several of the videos are quite chilling, so be forewarned.

Duluth News-Tribune: 'It's a miracle a kid hasn't been killed': Lawmakers look to increase school bus safety awareness

StarTribune: Legislators want to improve school bus safety

WCCO TV: Minnesota Senate Republicans Say Many Drivers Are Ignoring School Bus Stop Arms

In closing, I just wanted to give everyone a quick reminder that today (Wednesday) is National School Bus Driver Appreciation Day, so whether you're a student, parent, teacher, or school administrator, take some time to recognize your bus drivers for the difficult job they do.  From the testimony presented at yesterday's hearing, it's obvious how much bus drivers care about the important job they perform.  It's important to remember that for many students, the bus driver is the first school employee they see in the morning and the last one they see at the end of the school day.  They set the tone and they set it well, so how about some love for your school bus drivers.