A driver follows school bus driver Ron Condon as he drives through Battle Ground School District on Tuesday morning. , Sept. 1, 2015. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
With school resuming today for most local districts, hundreds of buses have begun driving on Clark County roads.
Local law enforcement agencies, school districts and school bus drivers have the same message for drivers and pedestrians: Slow down. Take your time. Pay attention.
Although drivers have been blasting through school zones at 35 miles per hour this summer, now the speed limit is 20 miles per hour, said Kim Kapp, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Police Department.
A whopping 63 accidents involving school buses occurred on Clark County roadways in the last three school years, according to statistics obtained from the Washington Department of Transportation. Although none of these accidents resulted in fatalities, 30 people were injured.
The main causes of drivers colliding with school buses is “inattention. People driving too fast. People on their cellphones,” said Elizabeth Hall, operations manager at Cascade Student Transportation, which operates school buses for Battle Ground Public Schools. “Keep your eyes open and look for buses.”
In just two school years of driving a school bus for Battle Ground Public Schools, Ron Condon has seen plenty of drivers either breaking a law or sometimes just making a bad judgement call.
Distracted drivers
“It’s funny how invisible we are in a big yellow box. Mostly, other drivers are in a hurry and not paying attention,” Condon, 55, said as he pulled bus No. 74 out of the bus parking lot onto 199th Street on Tuesday morning. “You see a lot of things that sometimes amaze you. Distracted drivers. Cellphones. Texting. Women putting on make-up.”
Stopping his bus to allow kids to board or exit takes only about three or four minutes. But that short time waiting for a bus has caused drivers “to give me hand signals when I’m stopping,” he said.
Among the traffic violators he has encountered are sign-runners — drivers who are approaching his stopped bus, but they are too busy talking on the phone or texting to notice.
“They look up and have skidded past my stop,” he said.
On multiple occasions when Condon has been stopped at railroad crossings, vehicles have passed him. That’s happened even at the railroad crossing at Crawford Road and 249th Street.
“I’ve had people pass me here, even though it’s a railroad crossing and a blind corner,” he said.
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At intersections, drivers have pulled out right in front of him to avoid driving behind a school bus. Sometimes on straight stretches, they speed and pass his bus.
As if on cue, as the bus traveled at the speed limit on a two-lane road with very little shoulder, a sedan with an impatient driver pulled into the opposite lane, accelerated and passed the bus at a speed well over the speed limit.
“It happens more than you’d think,” Condon said. “Once or twice a week.”
Condon’s route serves the Tukes Valley campus shared by a primary and a middle school. He said the parents dropping off and picking up their own children sometimes endanger others by whipping into the parking lot and pulling in front of other cars and the buses.
“Impatience is a big deal,” Condon said as he swung his bus into the Tukes Valley parking lot. “In the school parking lots, it would help if parents would watch their speed.”
Vancouver police Officer Patrick Johns, the department’s traffic unit supervisor, emphasized three safety concerns: cellphones, speeding and safety seats for kids.
“All the schools in our region have a serious impact on our traffic flow. Give yourself enough time to get to your destination,” Johns said. “Put that cellphone away. Don’t make any calls whatsoever in the school zone. Concentrate on your driving.”
Sometimes Johns gets complaints from adult crossing guards who report harried drivers who don’t come to a complete stop while going around a corner at a school crosswalk.
School zone speed limit is 20 miles per hour.
When a school bus is stopped and has its stop sign out, drivers must stop and must not pass. The exception is if there’s a divided, multilane road and the bus is on the other side of the road.
All car occupants must wear a seat belt.
Children under 13 must ride in the back seat.
Children must be strapped into an appropriate car seat or booster seat, dependent on their weight.
“Pay attention in those morning and afternoon hours, “ Johns said. “We are going to be out in force these first few weeks of school, working our school zones and looking to catch drivers who aren’t paying attention. It doesn’t cost you anything to slow down.”
Kids must be buckled into child seats. No child under the age of 13 can be in the front seat unless it’s a front-seat-only vehicle. The law is designed to protect kids from air bags’ deploying and hurting them, he said.
Distracted pedestrians
School zones equal “a lot of pedestrians in a hurry,” Kapp said.
A fairly new concern that’s received national attention is what Kapp called “distracted walking.”
Increasingly, pedestrians are on their cellphones. They might be wearing a hoodie with the hood up. They might be wearing headphones and listening to music. In any case, these distracted pedestrians can’t hear and aren’t watching where they are walking.
”I think all of us have seen people with that behavior,” Kapp said. “People get so engrossed in their electronic device and they can’t see or hear traffic. It’s really very scary. What would be considered a low-speed crash could kill a pedestrian.”
