Bus passing a 'national epidemic'

Once every seven minutes — that’s about how often a car blows by a school bus’ blinking stop signs during its five hours on the road on a typical school day in Canandaigua.

Though many school buses have added an extra stop sign to their flanks in an effort to catch the attention of area drivers, motorists have continued to pass buses on both sides with regularity, said Scott Goble of the Canandaigua City School District.

“Vehicles passing stopped school buses with their red lights flashing is a national epidemic,” said Goble.

There are certainly “hot spots” in Canandaigua where drivers may be confused about the rules on stopping for buses, such as Main Street, which is a divided highway, Goble said. The law says cars must stop for school buses in both directions, even on divided highways.

Cars sometimes seem to “follow the leader” when passing buses, said Nila Repard, a longtime bus driver for Canandaigua schools — if the first car goes, the others assume they can, too.

A video circulating on Facebook recently showed cars whizzing by school buses, with a few narrowly missing children who had just exited the bus.

Watchdog report: Drivers beware of school buses

“It's scary, because especially in the afternoons, the kids have been cooped up all day and have other things on their minds,” Repard said. Repard’s route takes her through calmer areas where she doesn’t see a lot of passing, but it’s a common sight for other colleagues.

Canandaigua bus drivers participated in several surveys last school year to count how many cars actually passed them on a given day, Goble said. The surveys from 2014-2015 showed an average of 41 passes per day. So far, the surveys from the 2015-2016 year averaged 37 passes per day.

A statewide survey taken on Jan. 20 showed over a thousand bus drivers in 29 districts were passed a total of 504 times. At that rate, all the buses in the state would have been passed more than 23,000 times that day, according to the New York Association for Pupil Transportation.

“I hear about it on a daily basis from drivers coming in,” said Michael Dallessandro of the Greece Central School District, which has one of the larger bus fleets in the state. “We’re getting used to it.”

With people putting on makeup, eating and using their phones in their cars these days, anything could cause inattention long enough for someone to pass a school bus, he said. The topic is discussed briefly in driver’s education classes, but if a student isn’t present for that lesson or not paying attention, they could miss instruction on the law.

There is currently no way to legally prosecute those who pass school buses by using bus cameras, said Dallessandro.

While drivers can fill out forms with license plate information from a passing car and send them to the Department of Motor Vehicles, that driver will get a cautionary letter in the mail instead of a ticket, he said.

Legislation up for consideration in Albany would allow districts to use stop arm cameras to capture license plate numbers of passing motorists, he said. The footage would be given to law enforcement for possible ticketing.

Canandaigua was a recent pilot site for this program, said Goble, adding that, should the state legislation go through, the cameras would come at little cost to the district in exchange for increased children’s safety.

Bus drivers may honk at passing cars, but the emphasis of their training is defensive driving, knowing that a car could disregard the law at any time, said Dallessandro.

“We’re really putting our focus in basically having our employees thinking that every car is going to pass them,” he said. “If a car stops, you should be really happy.”

STADDEO@Gannett.com