3 Children Killed by Woman Who Failed to Stop For Stopped School Bus

Bob001 said:
In the U.S. schoolbuses are purpose-built, with color, flashers, pop-out stop sign and other elements mandated by law.

https://thomasbuiltbuses.com/school-buses/
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Yes, we get that, it's just that in most of the world other traffic doesn't have to stop for school busses provided there's room to pass. The bus stops, children get off, the bus pulls away and the children cross the road when it is safe to do so. Part of the Green Cross training was about awareness of the danger of walking out from behind stopped busses or other obstacles. This doesn't excuse a driver in a country where you do have to stop for school busses in any way what so ever, but it's why people from outside America might initially think about the circumstances slightly differently.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Yes, we get that, it's just that in most of the world other traffic doesn't have to stop for school busses provided there's room to pass. The bus stops, children get off, the bus pulls away and the children cross the road when it is safe to do so. Part of the Green Cross training was about awareness of the danger of walking out from behind stopped busses or other obstacles. This doesn't excuse a driver in a country where you do have to stop for school busses in any way what so ever, but it's why people from outside America might initially think about the circumstances slightly differently.
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You don't say where you are, but I would imagine in most of the world they are smart enough not to locate schoolbus stops where six-year-olds have to run across 55-mph highways in the dark.
 
Bob001 said:
You don't say where you are, but I would imagine in most of the world they are smart enough not to locate schoolbus stops where six-year-olds have to run across 55-mph highways in the dark.
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Distances to schools are often long in the USA, so you often end up with a long bus ride to and from school, which can start, or end, when the sun is not up.

Walking to school in the dark, which I had to do as a boy, is probably more dangerous. Some places where you crossed a street had crossing guards. Some did not. And of course we kids did not always walk the route we were supposed to walk.

One morning in the winter, I remember coming up to a street crossing manned by a crossing guard, near the school. As the guard walked out to stop the traffic, a car without any lights on slammed into her and just kept going...I can still see her body flying through the air. I can still remember my brother and I frantically trying to find help. We finally managed to get someone in the school to pay attention to us and my (older) brother reported what happened.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Distances to schools are often long in the USA, so you often end up with a long bus ride to and from school, which can start, or end, when the sun is not up.

Walking to school in the dark, which I had to do as a boy, is probably more dangerous. Some places where you crossed a street had crossing guards. Some did not. And of course we kids did not always walk the route we were supposed to walk.

One morning in the winter, I remember coming up to a street crossing manned by a crossing guard, near the school. As the guard walked out to stop the traffic, a car without any lights on slammed into her and just kept going...I can still see her body flying through the air. I can still remember my brother and I frantically trying to find help. We finally managed to get someone in the school to pay attention to us and my (older) brother reported what happened.
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That must have been horrible. Did the crossing guard survive? Did they catch the driver?

A difference between schoolbuses and walking to school is that kids can be trained to wait for lights, look both ways, cross in groups, etc., etc. But when a kid sees a schoolbus with it's lights flashing, he thinks he's safe. His biggest concern is getting to the bus before it leaves him behind. If these kids had just been trying to cross the highway, they might have waited for the oncoming truck to pass by.
 
For 5th time in 3 days, a driver hits kids at a bus stop, this time in Tampa, police say

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/us/tampa-school-bus-stop-vehicle-hits-students/index.html

It was at least the fifth time in three days that children were hurt or worse at a bus stop. The other crashes occurred in Mississippi, Indiana and a second Florida city; in another Thursday incident, an apparent hit-and-run in Pennsylvania, a second-grader was reportedly left dead on the side of the road.
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Bob001 said:
Actually, with the school bus lights flashing, they shouldn't have had to look. They no doubt thought cars would stop.
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True. And it's in no way their fault. However, it's always a good idea to look before crossing regardless of signals or right of way. My kids always said "If they hit me it's their fault." My reply was along the line of: "OK, then. You can sue...if you survive." Defensive walking. Don't assume that others will not screw up.

This is a tragedy for everyone. Three kids dead and one woman's life screwed up for the foreseeable future.
 
Bob001 said:
You don't say where you are, but I would imagine in most of the world they are smart enough not to locate schoolbus stops where six-year-olds have to run across 55-mph highways in the dark.
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Possibly, but then again, where might else the bus stop? You are on a rural stretch of highway. It's not like they can go to the corner intersection. Will the bus have to pull into the driveway? Then they have to back out, so you have a bus backing out into a stretch of highway....

The solution is not always easy.

A sign warning of a Bus Stop Ahead might help some, but it will still get missed or ignored.
 
TomB said:
True. And it's in no way their fault. However, it's always a good idea to look before crossing regardless of signals or right of way. My kids always said "If they hit me it's their fault." My reply was along the line of: "OK, then. You can sue...if you survive." Defensive walking. Don't assume that others will not screw up.

This is a tragedy for everyone. Three kids dead and one woman's life screwed up for the foreseeable future.
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I always thought that the procedure for crossing the road was

1) The bus stops
2) The bus driver signals to the students that it is safe to cross
3) They cross

I'm sure that step 2 gets to be careless over time. Moreover, the kids are at risk even if they are standing on the side of the road waiting, so it's never going to be perfect.
 
pgwenthold said:
Possibly, but then again, where might else the bus stop? You are on a rural stretch of highway. It's not like they can go to the corner intersection. Will the bus have to pull into the driveway? Then they have to back out, so you have a bus backing out into a stretch of highway....
The solution is not always easy.
A sign warning of a Bus Stop Ahead might help some, but it will still get missed or ignored.
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The authorities have already re-routed the bus through the residential neighborhood away from the highway, as neighbors and parents had apparently been demanding for years. Looks pretty easy after three kids get killed.
The Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation announced Wednesday that it would relocate the bus stop into the trailer park where the students lived starting Nov. 1.
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https://www.indystar.com/story/news...oving-bus-stop-after-deadly-crash/1836983002/
 
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pgwenthold said:
I always thought that the procedure for crossing the road was

1) The bus stops
2) The bus driver signals to the students that it is safe to cross
3) They cross

I'm sure that step 2 gets to be careless over time. Moreover, the kids are at risk even if they are standing on the side of the road waiting, so it's never going to be perfect.
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The protocols should probably be revised. Or a special crosswalk with warning lights activated by the school bus?
 
Elagabalus said:
The protocols should probably be revised. Or a special crosswalk with warning lights activated by the school bus?
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???

A "special crosswalk" on a stretch of highway in the middle of the country road?

Isn't that essentially what a bus with flashing red lights is?
 
pgwenthold said:
???

A "special crosswalk" on a stretch of highway in the middle of the country road?

Isn't that essentially what a bus with flashing red lights is?
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Money is always an issue. Some cities have installed these "HAWK" lights at mid-block crossing points.
https://michigancompletestreets.wor...strian-hybrid-beacons-hawk-signals-explained/

They can cost $150,000 each.

But it's hard to believe that any route requires making kids cross a highway, even if the bus has to make a u-turn through a parking lot.
 
Bob001 said:
Actually, with the school bus lights flashing, they shouldn't have had to look. They no doubt thought cars would stop.
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That's irrelevant. You never know when some idiot who's distracted, in a hurry or running from the cops is going to run you over. It's just good risk management to look anyway. My mum told me that when I was a wee kid and the only time I got hit by a car, I wasn't looking as I ran across the street.
 
pgwenthold said:
???

A "special crosswalk" on a stretch of highway in the middle of the country road?

Isn't that essentially what a bus with flashing red lights is?
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Yes. My feeling is that an official painted on the road crosswalk would indicate (a little more forcefully) to the oncoming drivers that they must stop. In the Indiana accident there was no official crosswalk.
 
Bob001 said:
Actually, with the school bus lights flashing, they shouldn't have had to look. They no doubt thought cars would stop.
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Belz... said:
That's irrelevant. You never know when some idiot who's distracted, in a hurry or running from the cops is going to run you over. It's just good risk management to look anyway. My mum told me that when I was a wee kid and the only time I got hit by a car, I wasn't looking as I ran across the street.
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#

This ^^^^

Without detracting from the tragedy, when crossing a road, you look.
 
Elagabalus said:
Yes. My feeling is that an official painted on the road crosswalk would indicate (a little more forcefully) to the oncoming drivers that they must stop. In the Indiana accident there was no official crosswalk.
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It's in the middle of the country roads. A crosswalk would mean nothing.

No one would see the stupid crosswalk until they ran over it.

It's not a pedestrian area in anyway.
 
Bob001 said:
Money is always an issue. Some cities have installed these "HAWK" lights at mid-block crossing points.
https://michigancompletestreets.wor...strian-hybrid-beacons-hawk-signals-explained/

They can cost $150,000 each.

But it's hard to believe that any route requires making kids cross a highway, even if the bus has to make a u-turn through a parking lot.
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Believe it.

There are no parking lots. There are corn fields. There are 1/4 mile long driveways to the farmhouse. There is a neighbor on the other side of the road 1/3 of a mile away. The bus stops there, too.

There are no street lights, or stop lights, and the nearest intersection is a mile away.
 
pgwenthold said:
It's in the middle of the country roads. A crosswalk would mean nothing.

No one would see the stupid crosswalk until they ran over it.

It's not a pedestrian area in anyway.
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Eh ***Shrugs*** I tried. I guess there's nothing to be done to improve the situation until electric driverless cars are mandatory. They won't be plowing into pedestrians casually walking across the highway! Oh, wait ...

pgwenthold said:
It's in the middle of the country roads. A crosswalk would mean nothing.

No one would see the stupid crosswalk until they ran over it...
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Which is why I suggested some more warning lights.

pgwenthold said:
... It's not a pedestrian area in anyway.
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Well, not now. But it should be.
 
Bob001 said:
You don't say where you are, but I would imagine in most of the world they are smart enough not to locate schoolbus stops where six-year-olds have to run across 55-mph highways in the dark.
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The UK, and you're correct, we wouldn't do that. Where there is a need to criss dangerous (or often not particularly dangerous) roads we tend to put in Zebra or Pelican Crossings, or station crossing guards at key times.
 
pgwenthold said:
Believe it.

There are no parking lots. There are corn fields. There are 1/4 mile long driveways to the farmhouse. There is a neighbor on the other side of the road 1/3 of a mile away. The bus stops there, too.

There are no street lights, or stop lights, and the nearest intersection is a mile away.
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And yet, as I noted above, they have already re-routed the bus through the trailer park from which the kids walked, as the parents had long requested. Too bad they didn't do it last year or last month or last week.

And this wrap-up includes videos of the scene that show buildings, crossstreets and mailboxes. Maybe not so isolated.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news...lled-what-we-know-siblings-driver/1830217002/

And there is this from above link:
According to Michelle Jumper, an Indiana State Police detective who testified at a probable cause hearing into charges against driver Alyssa Shepherd, the bus driver told investigators he saw the oncoming truck's headlights. Because the truck was far back and had plenty of time to slow, the bus driver waved to the children, telling them to cross, according to Jumper's testimony on what the bus driver told investigators.
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Apparently the bus driver told the kids it was okay to cross.
 
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Bob001 said:
That must have been horrible. Did the crossing guard survive? Did they catch the driver?

A difference between schoolbuses and walking to school is that kids can be trained to wait for lights, look both ways, cross in groups, etc., etc. But when a kid sees a schoolbus with it's lights flashing, he thinks he's safe. His biggest concern is getting to the bus before it leaves him behind. If these kids had just been trying to cross the highway, they might have waited for the oncoming truck to pass by.
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I remember the crossing guard being taken to the hospital and surviving. I don't remember if they caught the driver.
 
There is a crosswalk with lights on the hiking/biking trail that I use frequently, where it crosses a 2 lane highway in the middle of nowhere. The light system was added about 6 months ago. The crosswalk was previously just the painted markings on the road.

It seems to be solar/battery powered. I doubt it cost very much.

You press a button and the signs on either side light up with flashing LEDs. There are also signs back up the road on each side, about 100 yards, that also flash to give drivers an earlier warning.

They also added a street light near the crosswalk.

I'm not aware of anyone ever being hit by a vehicle at the crosswalk.

I have never pushed the button, and I've never seen anyone else do so.

I think most people do not try to cross at night, and most people don't see any need to push the button in daylight.
 
LTC8K6 said:
This woman apparently did this every time she encountered the school bus at the bus stop loading children. This is video showing two times she did it.
The police staked the spot out and stopped her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqyHv-niL5I
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What the hell was the reasoning there? "It's not illegal if I drive past the school bus on the sidewalk and not the street?"
 
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LTC8K6 said:
Given the front end damage, it doesn't look like she did much braking before impact.
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I noticed that as well and have been drying to think of a... tasteful way to word it.

Looking at the front end of that car and assuming she didn't hit anything else during the incident... how (bleeping) hard did she hit those kids? :(
 
JoeMorgue said:
What the hell was the reasoning there? "It's not illegal if I drive past the school bus on the sidewalk and not the street?"
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It's amazing the amount of rationalisation people will engage in to justify doing whatever the hell they want.

- "Sorry, you can't park here."
- "Yeah, I I'll be right back."

No, the sign doesn't say you can park here if you're right back, jackass.
 
Belz... said:
It's amazing the amount of rationalisation people will engage in to justify doing whatever the hell they want.

- "Sorry, you can't park here."
- "Yeah, I I'll be right back."

No, the sign doesn't say you can park here if you're right back, jackass.
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But even in this case she was being more dangerous, more illegal, and much, much, much more obvious about it.

It's like if you there's three empty handicapped spots on front of a store and pull into one of them and when the store says "Hey you can't park there, you don't have a tag" instead of going "Oh I'll only be a second" you take the time to get back in your car, pull out of the parking space, and then park horizontally across all three parking spaces, then get back out of your car and go "Oh I'll only be a second."
 
Back to the original tragedy, it appears that some states -- but not most -- require school buses to have roof-mounted flashing strobe lights that can be seen at long distances, even through fog. They cost about 100 bucks each.
Donna Sullivan, assistant director of transportation at Manhattan-Ogden (Kan.) Public Schools, says that her operation quickly saw the benefit of roof strobes after equipping their fleet a few years ago. "We always keep track of stop-arm violations, and there was a significant drop after we put strobe lights on the buses," Sullivan says.
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http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/article/611297/roof-strobes-draw-crucial-attention

Maybe they should be required everywhere.
 
Bob001 said:
Back to the original tragedy, it appears that some states -- but not most -- require school buses to have roof-mounted flashing strobe lights that can be seen at long distances, even through fog. They cost about 100 bucks each.

http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/article/611297/roof-strobes-draw-crucial-attention

Maybe they should be required everywhere.
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The problem is that if you're an oncoming driver the flashing lights will cause you to look at the lights on the bus and not see the kids stepping out into your lane from the same side you are currently on. There needs to be a lamp to illuminate the kids.
 
Elagabalus said:
The problem is that if you're an oncoming driver the flashing lights will cause you to look at the lights on the bus and not see the kids stepping out into your lane from the same side you are currently on. There needs to be a lamp to illuminate the kids.
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But when you see the flashing lights you are required to stop in both directions. It shouldn't matter whether you can actually see any children. But some kind of side lighting certainly couldn't hurt.
 
Elagabalus said:
The problem is that if you're an oncoming driver the flashing lights will cause you to look at the lights on the bus and not see the kids stepping out into your lane from the same side you are currently on. There needs to be a lamp to illuminate the kids.
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I've got a better idea: require buses to stop perpendicular to the street, blocking it entirely.
 
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