School Bus Laws, A Reminder Before Cops Board Strongsville Buses

STRONGSVILLE, OH — Strongsville police officers have started riding in randomly selected school buses in an attempt to deter dangerous driving. Since cops will now be ticketing drivers that break long-established laws, Patch has compiled a must-know refresher course on relevant school bus laws.

"Unfortunately, some drivers in the community do not obey the traffic rules to stop and continue to drive around our school buses causing an unsafe situation for our students," Strongsville Schools Superintendent Cameron Ryba said in a letter to the community.

Here's which laws will be policed more aggressively moving forward:

• If a school bus stops on a street with less than four lanes (in both directions) then both directions of traffic must stop and cannot move until the bus begins rolling forward.
• If there's four or more lanes on a street, only traffic going the same direction as the bus must stop.
• Drivers need to stop at least 10 feet from the bus.
• Again, drivers stopped behind a bus must wait for the bus to move before moving themselves.

If the laws seem like common sense, they are. Still, impatient and aggressive drivers have caused numerous accidents in the past year involving school buses and children disembarking from buses.

On October 30, three siblings in Indiana were killed when they stepped off their school bus and were hit by a speeding driver. Other crashes occurred in Mississippi and Florida, with children being injured or killed by drivers ignoring a school bus' stop sign and flashing lights.

When patience is wearing thin behind the red octagonal sign and blinking lights, remember that bus drivers are required, by law, to run through a checklist each time they brake and then roll forward.

(For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here. And like Patch on Facebook!)

Photo from Shutterstock