Panel Votes to Soften School Bus Lights Law

A key Senate committee agreed Wednesday to soften a 7-month-old law intended to keep children safe by requiring that school buses use flashing red lights and bring traffic to a halt at every stop.

The move by the Senate Transportation Committee drew a mild rebuke from the father of a Laguna Niguel boy whose death helped spark creation of the law.

Tom Lanni, whose son Tommy was struck and killed after getting off a school bus in 1994, said the measure by Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncans Mills) was “much improved” over earlier versions, which he felt gutted the law before it had a chance to work.

But the bill still has a “fundamental” flaw, Lanni said, because it would prohibit bus drivers from using their red warning lights to stop motorists as far as 200 feet from a traffic signal. The change would prohibit the use of the warning lights at more than 50% of the school bus stops in his hometown.

“That is my big problem,” Lanni said.

Strom-Martin said use of the warning lights near a traffic signal is already prohibited by California law and that her bill simply clarifies when the blinkers shouldn’t be used. Use of warning lights near traffic signals, she said, causes confusion among motorists, creating the potential for accidents.

The transportation committee, which approved the measure on a 7-1 vote, was the key test for Strom-Martin’s bill. It now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee, then to the floor for a vote.

She and other state lawmakers have been inundated by complaints since the Lanni law went into effect Jan. 1.

State officials say no children have been reported killed or injured because of the law, but more than 200 collisions have occurred throughout California near stopped buses. Many motorists continue to ignore the rule and zip around buses at stops, though compliance has increased since police began issuing a raft of tickets to violators.

As now drafted, Strom-Martin’s bill would eliminate the use of warning lights when a bus pulls off a high-speed rural state highway, when a child needs assistance to unload or when a bus breaks down or is parked for an unusually long time to drop off children at school or a field trip.

It also would lift a requirement that drivers stop when approaching a school bus flashing the warning lights on the opposite side of a multilane or divided highway and when a road is covered with ice or snow.

Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), the lone dissenting vote on the committee, said he was troubled that lawmakers weren’t giving the Lanni law a chance to work and seemed to be putting the interests of motorists ahead of the safety of children.

“Is the death of a child an isolated freak accident, or is the death of a child an omen that we should be adjusting our driving?” Hayden asked. “I feel it’s the latter.”