When Do FL Drivers Have To Stop For School Buses?

FLORIDA — With kids back in school, Florida drivers may need a refresher about what to do when they encounter a stopped school bus.

Drivers in all 50 states are required to come to a complete stop when the bus stop arm is extended. Not quite half of them allow stop-arm cameras that can help investigators piece together what happened after accidents or prosecute motorists who violate school bus safety laws. There are other differences in state law.

Florida law requires that on a two-way street or highway, all drivers in both directions must stop for a stopped school bus which is picking up or dropping off children. Vehicles must remain stopped until all children are clear of the roadway and the bus’ stop arm is withdrawn.

If the highway is divided by a raised barrier or an unpaved median at least 5 feet wide, drivers do not have to stop if they are moving in the opposite direction of the bus. Painted lines or pavement markings are not considered barriers.

Drivers must always stop if they are moving in the same direction as a school bus and vehicles must remain stopped until the bus stop arm is withdrawn.

Last year, Florida law doubled the penalties for failure to stop for a school bus. The penalty for failure to stop for a school bus goes from a minimum $100 to $200 and if a second offense is committed in five years, the person’s license will be suspended for up to one year.

The penalty for passing a school bus on the side that children enter and exit when the school bus displays a stop signal is now a minimum of $400 and if a second offense is committed in five years, the driver’s license can be suspended up to two years.

The Wireless Communications While Driving Law prohibits the handheld use of a cellphone or other wireless device while driving in a designated school crossing, school zone, or active work zone area.

Violators commit a noncriminal traffic infraction, punishable as a moving violation, that includes a base $60 fine, not including court costs or other fees, and will have 3 points assessed against their license.

One thing is clear from federal data: Inattentive drivers put students at risk.

More than a third of the 301 children who died in school-transportation-related crashes from 2006-2015 were killed while approaching or leaving the bus, when the stop arm was extended, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.

One Deadly Week In 2018

In a one-week period in 2018, five children were killed and six were injured in five separate incidents — including two in Florida — involving drivers who passed stopped school buses. Three Indiana siblings were killed — 6-year-old twins and their 9-year-old stepsister — and another student was hurt on Oct. 29, 2018, while they were waiting for their school bus, which authorities said had its stop arm extended and lights flashing.

A day later, a 9-year-old boy in Mississippi was killed in the Tupelo, Mississippi, suburb of Pratts while crossing a highway to catch the school bus. The driver accused of striking the child was arrested and charged with one count of aggravated assault.

On the same day, a kindergarten student in Tallahassee, Florida, was injured when he was struck by a car while crossing the street to board his school bus. The bus had extended the crossing arm, and the driver of the vehicle told police he realized too late that the bus had stopped.

On Nov. 1, five children were injured while waiting for the bus in Tampa, Florida. Two adults were also hurt when a vehicle heading eastbound hit the group. Witnesses said the driver of the vehicle had been speeding before the crash.

Also that day, a second-grade student was killed at a bus stop in a hit-and-run accident Tyrone, Pennsylvania. The boy was already dead when the bus driver pulled up to the stop and called 911, the Tyrone Area School District superintendent said in a statement of the hit-and-run accident.

The potential for fatal and injury accidents exists every day, according to the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services.

States are taking various approaches to the problem.

For example, 22 states have now passed stop-arm camera laws to catch drivers who pass school buses when they’re stopped to pick up or let off children. They include Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

California doesn’t have a stop-arm camera law, but takes a unique approach with a law that has been in place since 1932 that requires school bus drivers to walk with students in grades kindergarten through eight when they need to cross a roadway, according to School Transportation News. The driver must verbally tell students when it’s safe to cross, rather than use hand signals that could be mistaken for a motorist’s signal to proceed. The law also requires the driver to shut off the bus and remove the keys.

“There are a multitude of options out there,” National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services President Michael LaRocco told School Transportation News in 2018. “There’s not one silver bullet out there, other than the simplest silver bullet — motorists need to pay attention to what’s going on around them.”

If not operated properly, vehicles are weapons that “will kill kids,” LaRocco said. “We need to look at the idea of doing more instruction at a public level with the motorists. … We can do [driver and student] training forever and a day, but we can’t stop a motorist that’s not paying attention.”

Research shows that driver distraction, especially with increased cellphone use, creates hazards on the road. But students are distracted, too, and don’t always pay attention to traffic before they cross the road, sometimes because they’re listening to music through earbuds or headphones.

The most dangerous part of the “danger zone” for students is the 10-foot area around the entire school bus when it stops, according to the School Bus Safety Company. The trainers there advise that if there’s a crossing gate installed on the bus, students should walk the length, about 10 feet, then check for traffic and wait for the driver’s signal to cross.

Then, or if no such equipment is installed, students should walk to the edge of the bus bumper, stop and check for traffic, then cross the street.

That’s particularly important for young students. The national school bus stop survey conducted annually by the Kansas Department of Education found that 73 percent of the students who were killed while getting on or off the bus over the past 48 years were 9 years old or younger.

“Would you let your 5- or 6-year-old cross the street by themselves?” Dick Fischer, a former school transportation director in California who now owns Transportation Consultant Group, says in safety training courses. A proponent of laws like the one in California, he asks: “Is it safer for you to cross the kids, or is it safer for you to sit in your seat and wave the kid on?”