The front page article of the Times-Union on school bus safety brought an important issue to the attention of this community. I am sure Warsaw Community Schools' experience with school bus stop arm violations is reflective of the four other school corporations in the county in addition to the Head Start bus experience.
The problem has become progressively worse over the last few years. Last week I had seven stop arm violations and two this week which, due to parent teacher conferences is a two day school week. Law enforcement has always been aggressive in issuing citations when officers observe violations.
The problem is that they observe only a very small percentage of violations - they just can't follow around each bus in the county. When a bus driver encounters a violation of the stop arm, they are concentrating more on the safety of the children exiting the bus than the identity of the car and driver.
Since Indiana only has license plates on the front of the vehicle the number is not visible until the vehicle has passed the bus, usually at a rapid speed. Getting a license number and necessary descriptions of driver and vehicle is next to impossible. On the rare occasion when the information is obtained it is turned over to the prosecutor's office to bring legal action.
Many of the Warsaw School Corporation drivers have given up reporting these offenses to the prosecutor because action is not taken except in the case of a citation issued by a law enforcement officer.
Since retirement from my insurance career, I have been driving a school bus part time. Before deploying and serving in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, I reported a violation and as of this date, no action has been taken.
I reported another violation in March of 2008 and again the prosecutor's office failed to act. Because of this failure of the prosecutor's office to promptly act, very few of the violations that occur are punished. Considering the high frequency of violations, the county has been very lucky a child has not been injured or killed. If the prosecutor's office does not become more aggressive in enforcing the law, it is only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs and when that happens they will deny responsibility and look for a scapegoat to point their finger at.
City, county and state law enforcement agencies are to be commended for their professionalism in citing school bus stop arm violators - the prosecutors need to be equally aggressive and professional in their responsibilities before the community mourns the death or injury of a child.
