School Bus Tragedy

In the news now is the story of three children—two 6-year-old twin brothers and their 9-year-old sister—who were killed while trying to cross a two-lane road to get to their waiting school bus. An 11-year-old boy was also struck and is hospitalized with multiple broken bones. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is sending a “go-team” to the location to try to understand how the accident happened.

The news article reports the bus was stopped with its flashing lights turned on and its stop-sign-arm deployed. Folks, we don’t need the NTSB to figure out how this accident happened. I can tell the NTSB exactly how it happened. Somebody ignored the bus’s flashing lights and stop sign and blew past the stopped bus at full speed. It happens every day all over America.

If you interview any school bus driver, you’ll hear about people ignoring the bus’s lights and stop sign and driving past the stopped bus. It probably happens at least once a day to every school bus driver in America. Passing a stopped school bus is already against the law, but you can’t make people obey the law. They have to want to obey the law. These kinds of tragic accidents will continue to happen until careless drivers have some skin in the game. Give them something to lose and they will be more likely to obey the law.

How about this: if you blow past a stopped school bus, ignoring its flashing light and the extended arm with the stop sign, then hi-def cameras will capture an image of your license plate and you will be identified and your vehicle will be confiscated.

Too draconian? Then how about option 2: when the bus is stopped with warnings deployed, any large metal object (car or truck) passing the bus will be detected by a small radar device affixed to the bus and a squirt of paint will be sprayed down the side of the passing vehicle.

Still to harsh? Okay then, let’s go to option 3: a smart sensor on every new car that can respond to the flashing lights of a stopped school bus and order the vehicle to slow down.

A real hi-tech solution would be to install on every future vehicle a “black box” that is capable of receiving a radio signal broadcast by a stopped school bus. The black box will then tell the car’s engine computer and brake system to slow or stop the vehicle. This solution would also allow work-zone speed limit compliance, as vehicles would automatically slow down to a transmitted speed limit. And police could quickly and safely terminate a pursuit by electronically stopping a vehicle rather than pursuing the vehicle at high speed for dozens of miles.

I’m just thinking outside the box, as no doubt many others have done. There are people smarter than me out there (I hope). Perhaps one of them will invent a solution to this problem before more tragedies occur.