How to Stay Safe on the Roads When School Is Back in Session
The most dangerous place around a school bus is not inside it. It is the ten feet of road on every side of it. Buses themselves are among the safest vehicles on American roads. The great majority of school transportation deaths involve children walking to or from the bus, struck by passing vehicles rather than by the bus itself.
That single fact explains almost every rule below, and it is worth knowing before the buses come back in August.
The Stop Arm Rule Is Not Advisory
When a school bus extends its stop arm and shows flashing red lights, traffic in both directions must stop, and stay stopped until the arm retracts and the bus moves.
The one common exception is a divided highway with a physical median or barrier, where traffic on the opposite side of the divider may proceed. A center turn lane is not a divider, and painted lines are not a divider. If you are unsure, stop.
Surveys by state pupil transportation associations have repeatedly counted tens of thousands of illegal passes on a single day nationwide. Extrapolated across a school year, the number runs into the millions. Penalties are severe in most states and increasingly enforced with stop arm cameras, but the reason to stop is the child crossing in front of the bus who cannot see you.
The Danger Zone
The area within roughly ten feet of a bus on all sides is where children are most at risk, because a driver seated high in a large vehicle cannot see a small child close to it.
Children crossing in front of a bus should walk far enough ahead to see the driver’s face, which means the driver can see them. Anyone who drops something near a bus should tell the driver rather than reaching for it.
For everyone else on the road, the practical rule is to leave the zone alone entirely: do not pass a bus that is slowing, do not creep forward at a stop, and expect a child to appear from in front of the bus at any moment.
Morning and Afternoon Are Different Problems
Morning is about light and predictability. In late August and September the sun is low at the hours buses run, and glare in the east at 7 a.m. is a genuine hazard. Clean the inside of your windshield, because glare shows every smear, and leave earlier so you are not making up time.
Afternoon is about volume and distraction. Dismissal releases children, buses, parent pickup traffic and teenage drivers into the same streets within about fifteen minutes. School zone speed limits are typically 15 to 25 miles per hour and are enforced hard, but the speed limit is not the point. Twenty miles per hour is a survivable impact for a pedestrian and forty is usually not.
Teenage Drivers Deserve Their Own Paragraph
New drivers are heavily overrepresented in crashes, and the risk is concentrated in the first months of licensure and in the hours right after school.
Two factors dominate: passengers and phones. Crash risk for a teenage driver rises sharply with each additional teenage passenger in the car, which is why graduated licensing laws in most states restrict passengers for the first period. Those restrictions exist because the data is unambiguous, and they are worth enforcing at home even where the state does not.
The other conversation worth having is about time. Most teenage speeding is not thrill seeking, it is a driver who left five minutes late. Building the extra five minutes into the routine removes the cause rather than arguing about the symptom.
Walking and Cycling Routes
Most school zone incidents involving pedestrians happen within a few blocks of the school rather than at the building itself, which is where drivers relax and children stop paying attention at the same moment.
Walk or ride the route with a younger child before the term starts rather than describing it. Fix on specific crossing points, particularly anywhere with no marked crosswalk, and agree that they use those and not the shortest line.
Visibility is worth more than any other single measure in the darker months. Something reflective on a backpack is visible several times further than dark clothing in headlights. Helmets for cyclists, and the same crossing rules on a bike as on foot.
If Your Student Is Leaving for College
The other August traffic pattern is the college move, and it comes with a decision most families make late.
Many first year students either cannot keep a car on campus or find that parking costs more than they expected, so the car goes back and forth by season rather than living at school. Shipping it is usually easier than a parent driving it and flying home, and August is the busiest month of the year on the routes into college towns. Two to three weeks of lead time is realistic, and campus addresses frequently need a meeting point because a full size hauler cannot work a dormitory street during move in week.
Our guide to shipping a car for college students covers the timing and the campus rules in detail.
Common Questions
When must I stop for a school bus? Whenever the stop arm is out and the red lights are flashing, in both directions, unless a physical median divides the road.
Is a center turn lane a divider? No. Only a physical median or barrier counts. If in doubt, stop.
Where are children most at risk? Within about ten feet of the bus, where the driver cannot see them, and crossing in front of it.
Why do teenage passenger limits exist? Because crash risk for a new driver rises sharply with each additional teenage passenger. The restriction is evidence based.
When should I ship a student’s car? Two to three weeks ahead for August, which is the busiest month on routes into college towns.
Get a Quote
Call Ship A Car, Inc. at (866) 821-4555 with both zip codes and your date range, or price the move with the instant calculator.
