The National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) says 39.3 million motorists could be illegally passing school buses nationwide, after updating its National Stop Arm Count survey to correct data reported by California.  

The California Department of Education provided new figures to NASDPTS to correct the number of driver-side and student loading-door-side illegal passes by motorists at school bus stops. As a result, NASDPTS extrapolated a decrease in the number of potential violations based on a 180-day school year and nationwide, further indicating that while still a major issue illegal passing rates improved during the 2024-2025 school year.

NASDPTS announced its 13th National Stop Arm Violation Count, a one-day snapshot of motorists illegally passing stopped school buses while loading or unloading students during the 2024-2025 school year, at National School Transportation Association Annual Meeting and Convention Tuesday in Boston, Massachusetts. Earlier this year, California joined 35 other states and the District of Columbia in voluntary one-day counts of motorists passing the federally mandated stop arm and flashing red lights at school bus stops while children are loading or unloading.

Initially, the NASDPTS report indicated that the 1,943 participating school bus drivers in California — accounting for approximately 8 percent of the 21,668 school buses in operation each school day, according to the California Department of Education’s Office of School Transportation — observed 10,381 violations, and that all occurred on the right-side of the school buses where students load and exit.

California clarified Thursday that a total of 8,231 violations of the school bus stop arm and red lights were reported, with 3,881 occurring from the front of the bus and 4,350 from the rear. None occurred on the right side where the loading door is located, Anna Borges, supervisor the Office of Student Transportation, told School Transportation News.

California is also the only state to require all kindergarten through eighth grade students be escorted by their drivers, when the students must cross the street to and from the school bus to get to or from their homes. In these instances, the Office of Student Transportation clarified that 136 illegal passes were observed, where the motorist or motorist approached the school bus from the front or as oncoming traffic, during afternoon routes. Fifty-nine motorists passed during morning routes and dight during mid-day routes. Motorists passed from the rear of the school bus during escorted routes 104 times in the afternoon, 32 times in the morning, and 10 times at mid-day.

Illegal passes spiked on non-escorted routes, a total of 7,882 instances, or nearly 96 percent of the total observations. This included students who don’t need to cross the street and students in grades 9 through 12.

A total of 1,711 school buses operated by 149 of the California’s 950 school districts that provide home-to-school transportation and 11 private carriers participated in the April 29 count. 

With the correction, NASPDTS said 218,000 illegal passing incidents  report indicates 114,471 school bus drivers, or 31 percent of the nation’s total, reported a total of 69,408 vehicles passed their buses illegally. Adjusting to account for 100 percent all school bus drivers in the U.S., NASDPTS said over 218,000 illegal passing violations could occur on one day, a decrease of 7,000 based on the initial sample previously reported. NASDTPS also extrapolates 1.3 million fewer incidents could occur during a 180-day school year across all 50 states, 39.3 million compared to the original estimate of 40.6 million. While still high, the new figure represents 13-percent fewer illegal passes than the 45.2 million reported for the 2023-2024 school year.

“Even with these corrected numbers the illegal passing of stopped school buses continues to be the greatest safety danger to children,” said NASDPTS President Mike Stier. ”Regardless of the number, 39.3 million violations is simply too many. We continue to encourage each state to raise awareness on this important safety issue and to do everything possible to ensure motorists put the safety of school children first.”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts nationwide saw the number of illegal passings spike. NASDPTS had previously cited 41.8 million violations occurring using data from the 2019 and 2022 surveys, as the survey was suspended for two years during the height of COVID, when schools nationwide closed their doors and few school buses were on route. The survey returned in 2022.

Meanwhile, the most recent survey indicated 80 percent of the reported illegal passes occurred on the left side of the stopped school bus. More notably, that left almost 20 occurring on the right side of the bus, where the loading doors are located and where students enter and exit.

According to the NASDPTS update, over 50 percent of the observed illegal passes, 33,914 instances, occurred during afternoon routes. About 46 percent, or 31,127 violations, occurred in the morning and 2,217 violations, over 3 percent, occurred during midday routes. Sixty-nine percent of the observed violations, 39,442, were committed by motorists in oncoming vehicles as opposed to 22,203 vehicles, 36 percent, following from the rear.

Georgia led the way with the most school bus drivers participating in the one-day count at 13,468 followed by Tennessee with 11,811 and North Carolina with 10,597.

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The National Transportation Safety Board released its final report on the fatal pedestrian crash in the Town of Excelsior, Wisconsin, citing texting as the main cause.

A 2016 Blue Bird school bus operated by the Reedsburg School District stopped on May 12, 2023 to board students in the westbound lane of State Highway 23/33. It is a two-lane, two-way roadway with paved shoulders and a 55-mph speed limit. The school bus slowed, nearly to a stop, and the driver deactivated the flashing amber lights to activate the front and rear flashing red lights. The bus driver also extended the stop arm.

At that point, a 17-year-old motorist behind the wheel of a 2010 Ford F-150 pickup braked and swerved to the right, sideswiping the school bus’ right-rear corner, continuing across the paved shoulder, onto a private driveway, striking and killing a 13-year-old student who was waiting to board. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The pickup driver, Kevin Green, only had a probationary license at the time of the incident. His response to the slowing and stopped school buses was too late, the NTSB said, because “he was distracted by his cell phone texting activity.” The pickup truck’s high and blunt hood design, combined with its speed at the time of the collision, estimated to be 54 mph, contributed to the student pedestrian’s death, the report adds.

Green was charged with homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle.

NTSB noted that the pickup truck’s final resting position was about 290 feet west of the rear of the school bus, and the student was about 100 feet northwest of the initial impact from the truck. The truck driver had minor injuries, and no other students or the school bus driver were injured. The school bus was not equipped with seatbelts.

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The agency found “that a cell phone lock-out system that disables the use of features that are not related to the driving task can reduce cell phone–related distracted driving crashes. Likewise, driver monitoring systems that can detect and alert a distracted driver and bring their attention back to the driving task can also reduce cell phone–related distracted driving crashes.”

Additionally, NTSB said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) 2013 Driver Distraction Guidelines are “lacking” as the agency does not incorporate advanced technologies that have been introduced in the past 12 years and only focuses on visual-manual distraction of in-vehicle electronic devices.

Meanwhile, the NTSB added that the pickup truck was not equipped with collision avoidance technology such as forward collision warning or automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems. Had the pickup truck been equipped with an AEB system, NTSB said the collision with the school bus could have been avoided or at least mitigated, thus preventing or mitigating the collision with the student.

As a result, the NTSB recommended that NHTSA develop and publish “Driver Distraction Guidelines that address the design of current original equipment in-vehicle electronic devices, portable electronic devices and aftermarket electronic devices to prevent driver distraction.” The agency reiterated its recommendation to cell phone manufacturers to develop a “distracted driving lock-out mechanism that will automatically disable any driver-distracting functions when a vehicle is in motion and install the mechanism in the default setting on all new devices and apply it during major software updates.”

Five more recommendations were reiterated to NHTSA following the crash. NTSB calls for NHTSA to develop and apply testing protocols to assess the performance of forward collision avoidance systems in passenger vehicles at various velocities, including high speed and high velocity-differential. It also calls on the agency to expand the New Car Assessment Program 5-star rating system to include a scale that rates the performance of forward collision avoidance and to develop performance test criteria for vehicle designs that reduce injuries to pedestrians.

NTSB also wants NHTSA to develop performance test criteria for manufacturers to use in evaluating the extent to which automated pedestrian safety systems in light vehicles will prevent or mitigate pedestrian injury and to incorporate pedestrian safety systems, including pedestrian collision avoidance systems and other more passive safety systems, into the New Car Assessment Program.

Ford Motor Company is urged to install forward collision avoidance systems that include, at a minimum, a forward collision warning component, as standard equipment on all new vehicles.

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The parents of a 10-year-old girl filed a lawsuit against their daughter’s district after the child was sexually assaulted on the school bus, reported Kansas City Star.

The federal lawsuit was filed against Taylorville Community Unit School District #3 and Durham School Services on June 17.

Local news reporters reached out to the district for comments but did not immediately hear back from the district. A spokesperson from school bus contractor Durham School Services said the company cannot comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit reportedly stems from an alleged sexual assault that took place during the 2023-2024 school year between students at Taylorville Junior High School.

According to the news report, in late January 2024, a 10-year-old girl with ADHD and autism was experiencing severe and pervasive bullying by a boy on board the bus and at a bus stop.

During a one-week period, the boy sat next to the girl on the school bus and repeatedly sexually assaulted her on their way home from school, the lawsuit said. The girl was corned as she was assaulted.

The complaint claims the boy told the girl that he would hurt her and her family if she told anyone about the incident. The boy also allegedly sexually assaulted her multiple times off the bus near a community center. The girl reportedly told a librarian at the center what happened, and her teacher was notified.

According to the lawsuit, the girl’s parents filed a police report, demanded protection from school officials and “insisted” the district to keep the boy away from their daughter. The district responded by placing the boy on a different school bus with younger children.

The complaint says the district took no measures whatsoever to prevent the boy from having access to the girl at or near the school bus stop.

After the alleged assault, the girl’s parents were told several times by community members that the boy had a prior history of engaging in acts of sexual improprieties on other younger children, according to the lawsuit via the article.

The lawsuit reportedly accuses the district of failing to notify all teachers of the safety plan, failing to get 30 days of bus footage after the assaults, failing to provide adequate safety protocols at and around the bus stops and on the bus, and failing to follow the order of protection issues on Feb. 2, 2024, which prohibited the boy from accessing the girl’s school.

The lawsuit is asking for an undetermined amount in damages.

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Authorities arrested a Horry County, South Carolina, man last week in connection to an incident last month in which a gun was pointed at a school bus transporting students, reported WMBF News.

The incident occurred May 7, when 34-year-old Emmanuel Ingram pointed a gun at a school bus with children inside.

Police stated that the Horry County Schools bus driver was dropping students off at their homes and saw a suspect, later identified as Ingram, at one of the bus stops.

According to several witnesses, Ingram allegedly pointed a small black handgun at the bus.

He also got on board the bus and started yelling at the school bus driver and the children, police added. Security video obtained by police showed the bus driver asking Ingram to get off the bus multiple times. Initially Ingram refused to do so, but later left the bus without injuring anyone.

Police did note that they could not determine in the video footage if Ingram had a gun, due to the angle and quality of the cameras. However, Ingram is facing multiple charges, including three counts of pointing and presenting firearms at a person, interfering with the operations of a school bus and contempt of family court. He is being held without bond at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center.

The investigation is ongoing.

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A 13-year-old student encountered black bears after getting off her school bus in West Hartford, Connecticut, reported NBC News.

According to the news report, seconds after the teen got off her school bus, she was greeted by two black bears. The teen, who was not identified in this writing, immediately called her mom, Jeannette Dardenne, upon seeing the bears.

Dardenne told local news reporters that her daughter told her in a very calm voice, “Mom, there is a bear in front of me,” then she paused and said, “There are two bears in front of me.”

Dardenne reportedly stayed on the phone with her daughter until the bears moved away.

“I think she was more like, ‘It’s beautiful,’ and I think it was also a lesson for her to recognize that there are wild animals here and you do have to take note,” said Dardenne.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) is tracking an increase in bear sightings. The bear population in the state is estimated to be between 1,000 and 1,200.

DEEP Wildlife Division Director Jenny Dickson said the uptick in activity is coming from bears trying to find food. Deep stated that in most cases, if a bear is left alone, it will make its way to a more natural habitat.

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AUBURN, Calif. – InterMotive Vehicle Controls, a leading manufacturer of electronic control systems, announces a new safety solution designed to protect students by alerting nearby drivers as the bus approaches a stop. By increasing the bus’s visibility, School Bus Flasher helps to indicate that children are exiting the vehicle, and crossing may occur.

The School Bus Flasher controls the operation of key safety features, including the amber warning lights, red stop lights, the stop arm and crossing arm. It functions as a stand-alone system but can be seamlessly integrated with InterMotive’s FlexTech product, a customizable vehicle electrical load control system.

Installation is made easy with simple plug and play connections, which eliminates the cutting of OEM factory wiring.

For more details, contact Marc Ellison, LGS Group VP of Sales and Marketing, at 530-368-9193 or go online at https://intermotive.net/transit-mobility-3/#sbf.

InterMotive Vehicle Controls provides commercial safety and performance optimization products. Our plug and play electronic control systems leverage a vehicle’s own data networks to enhance its functions in new ways. We specialize in custom solutions for law enforcement, ambulance, fire truck, work truck, transit/paratransit, school bus, RV and personal-use mobility industries. To learn more, call 800-969-6080 or visit www.intermotive.net.

The post New InterMotive School Bus Product Helps Keep Students Safe at Stops appeared first on School Transportation News.

In recognition of Distracted Driving Month in April, Bus Gates provided school districts with free products for a hands-on trial of the bus extension arms. School district leaders say the equipment can be part of the solution to combating illegal passing, in conjunction with enforcement cameras and driver training.

Nathanael Spence, coordinator of transportation for Amityville Public Schools in New York, noted that throughout his 18 years in transportation, he’s remained committed to finding innovative, data-driven solutions to reduce illegal passing and improve student safety.

“I’ve had hands-on experience piloting both BusPatrol enforcement cameras and two types of extended stop arms, and I’ve observed firsthand how each tool serves a unique purpose,” he said. “Extended stop arms are like the crossing gates at a railroad, designed to prevent tragedy by stopping motorists before danger strikes. Stop-arm cameras, while valuable, only document what should’ve been stopped. In safety, real protection comes from being proactive, not just recording reactions.”

He added that he believes a comprehensive approach consisting of both enforcement systems and extended stop-arms offers the greatest potential to change driver behavior and protect students. Spence noted Amityville began the school year with two Bus Gate units installed and has since expanded to four.

A Bus Gates pilot project for extended stop arms on school buses was launched in conjunction with Distracted Driving Awareness Month, with the goal of getting the extended stop-arm product in the hands of users.

“When you have that testimonial from the boots on the ground, the folks that are seeing the interaction with cars every single day, there’s just no substitute for that,” said Trevor Clatfelter, co-founder of Bus Gates. “So that allows us to get the product out there even further and get it on school busses even faster.”

 

He added that the bus extension arms are 95 percent effective in reducing illegal passing incidents.

 

Even though the program launched in April, it will remain available to school districts on a limited basis, pending inventory. Clatfelter noted that districts are not required to send the stop arm back and can choose to continue to use the product at no charge.

 

“We don’t care if your fleet has five buses or 50 buses or 500 buses,” he added. “We want to get the product out there to make every school child’s day safer.”

 

The product is added to the existing stop arm installed on the school bus. Bus Gate’s longest product extends six and half feet from the side of the bus, weighs less than three pounds, and includes flashing LED lights on the stop sign. Installation, Clatfelter said, 15 to 30 minutes.

“It is a super simple, easy install, and they’re pretty universal to go on most stop arms,” he said, adding that his company found a couple instances where modifications had to be made.

Bus Gates offers a shorter stop-arm extender for the rear, if districts have dual stop arms.

 

For liability purposes, Clatfelter said the extension is part of the original, federally mandated stop arm and is therefore part of the school bus as well. In states that allow Bus Gates use, hitting the bus extension arm is considered the same as hitting the stop-arm or the school bus itself, and would all result in the same penalties.

 

“When we go to trade shows, we want to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product, but it’s obnoxious,” said Chris McCloud, founding partner at Bus Gates marketing agency Pendulum PR “It’s obnoxious in especially an indoor setting, and it is that way so that in inclement weather, during the day, foggy conditions, the lights on the product cut through all of that. So, it doesn’t have to be a perfect day or near dusk for the product to be really effective. … [W]hat we’re hearing and seeing from the school districts that are using the product is ta massive reduction in the problem, which is people driving around the bus in the first place.”

 

While other technologies exist to increase safety at and around school buses, Clatfelter said, “Bus gates prevent, cameras prosecute.”

 

McCloud added that Bus Gates are a proactive product designed to stop a motorist from illegally passing a school bus, “Whether it’s on purpose or, and in most cases, not.

 

“We all choose to believe that the majority of the people that illegally pass a bus are not doing so with the intent to harm anybody,” he continued. “But at the end of the day, cameras don’t stop the activity from happening. Now, they might be able to catch some people by grabbing their license plate and then serving them a ticket, which hopefully then says, ‘Hey, I’m not going to do this again because I don’t want to pay the fine.’ But ultimately, it’s better to just prevent the activity, reducing the danger from happening in the first place. That’s what Bus Gates is trying to do.”

“We’ve observed a significant reduction in passing motorist incidents on those buses,” Spence said. “Being located in Suffolk County [Long Island], where BusPatrol enforcement cameras are also installed, we’ve been able to use the combined data from both systems to assess the impact, and the results are compelling. Buses equipped with both extended stop arms and enforcement cameras have shown an almost complete drop in illegal pass-bys.”

These findings have encouraged fleetwide implementation, which will be completed in phases by the school district’s contractor. Spence noted that year one will consist of equipping all large buses with Bus Gates, followed by all small buses in year two.

“Once the full rollout is complete, I’m eager to leverage year-over-year BusPatrol passing motorist data to perform a comparative analysis,” he said. “This will allow us to clearly measure the long-term impact of extended stop arms across our entire fleet and share meaningful results with stakeholders and other districts considering similar initiatives.”

Spence shared that his background of working with another stop-arm extension company gave him strong points of comparison.

“Bus Gates offered a similar safety benefit at a fraction of the cost, making the opportunity to outfit our entire fleet both fiscally responsible and operationally feasible,” he said. “The decision ultimately wasn’t just about adopting new technology. It was about leading with intention, maximizing our resources and setting a statewide example in school transportation safety.”

He shared that school bus drivers have found the easy-to-operate product sends a clear message to motorists of stop means stop. “That visibility alone has created a stronger sense of security during student loading and unloading,” Spence said, adding that community members expressed strong support in an NBC New York article in October.

“Since then, we’ve received inquiries from coordinators and transportation supervisors in neighboring districts who are eager to learn more about the technology and its effectiveness,” he continued. “Bus Gates has sparked not just compliance, but conversation, and that’s exactly the kind of awareness we need to drive long-term change in motorist behavior.”

Meanwhile, Bryan Broome, transportation operations manager for Parkway School District in Missouri, said when he became the fleet manager a few years ago, his director at the time discussed the issue of people running stop arms, which created an unsafe condition for the students.

That put a bug in Broome’s ear, and while attending an industry trade show he saw Bus Gates demonstrating its product.

“I just personally felt that Bus Gates seemed like the best solution as far as ease of install as well as (being) less intrusive on the bus,” he said. “It’s an issue that we have nationally where people are running stop arms. It’s horrible.”

He noted that some routes experienced two to three illegal passers a day. He noted that the Bus Gates were first installed on these routes, which cut infractions to about two to three violations a week.

“We stopped the majority of them,” he said. “Then we did some more investigating and found out that we needed [to do more training] on bus stop etiquette, of not coming to a stop and expecting the other cars to be able to stop immediately. … We had to work with our drivers as far as reminding them and working with them on bus stop etiquette and procedures.”

He noted that Bus Gates is not the sole solution but an additional tool to increase safety.

Broome said that Bus Gates were initially installed on six school buses. The school district began installing the units fleetwide on school buses earlier this school year and is expected to finish by the end of the summer.

“When we got the six units, I only put the arms on three buses for the first month or so, just to kind of try them out and see,” he said. “And then after about the first two or three days, I had drivers pretty much climbing over each other trying to get one installed on their bus. The drivers love them. They are looking for any tool that they could possibly get to help them keep their students safe.”

He also spoke about the concerns that motorists may hit the extended stop arm. “That is why we pushed the bus stop etiquette for the [school bus] drivers. It’s not just coming to a stop as fast as possible and throwing your arms out because sometimes it takes people a minute to react,” he shared.

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Instead, district leaders reminded drivers to be defensive rather than aggressive with the stop-arms. “People make mistakes while driving. Sometimes people aren’t paying attention to the bus,” he said. “So let’s give them a chance to stop, or if they’re going to speed around us, let them speed around you, but we need to work with our students to make sure that they understand that they shouldn’t approach the bus until the stop arm is out, and then the door is open and the driver signals them to cross and or board the bus.”

He said school bus drivers were trained to initiate the stop by first activating the yellow warning lights which indicate to the motorist that the school bus is stopping, whereas the reds mean the school bus is stopped.

“We still need to use the tool of the Bus Gates as well as the driver’s best judgment on when to signal the students to cross and board the bus,” he said. “If we just put a tool on the bus, it doesn’t mean they know how to use it properly. And if, for instance, [bus drivers] do come to a stop too short or they don’t have their yellows on for a long enough time, then if we ever had an incident where a driver struck the stop arm extension we could be liable for any damages because we weren’t using the best procedure to initiate the stop.”

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