Most Motorists Get Failing Grade on New Law, School Bus Drivers Say

Sue Kiefer’s office is cluttered with 100 license plate numbers, scrawled on the backs of envelopes, paper towels and napkins.

Those are the numbers that Laidlaw Transit bus drivers jotted down last week as motorists ignored a new law requiring them to stop whenever a school bus halts to pick up or drop off children.

The law went into effect Jan. 1. In the five school days since then, it seems that almost no one has been paying attention--even though every bus is emblazoned with words warning motorists to stop when its red lights are flashing. Kiefer, the head of bus driver training at Laidlaw’s Altadena yard, said two of the fleet’s buses have had their stop signs knocked off by passing motorists.

“It’s been a rough week,” Kiefer said. “I hope it will get better.”

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For years, motorists have had to halt for school buses--but only when children were crossing the street. The bus drivers got out of their vehicles, held up a stop sign and activated their buses’ blinking red lights. Then they shepherded the children across the street as cars waited.

But last year Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill pushed by parents of a 7-year-old Orange County boy killed when he was hit by a truck after getting off a school bus. The Thomas Edward Lanni School Bus Safety Act requires bus drivers to flash their red lights when children are boarding or getting off the bus on any public or private road--even if they are not crossing the street.

And when those lights flash, motorists on both sides of the street must come to a complete halt--unless there is a median dividing the thoroughfare or drivers are within 200 feet of an intersection. Failure to do so may result in a fine of up to $1,000. Three convictions in seven years for failing to stop for a bus leads to mandatory driver’s license suspension.

Despite the hefty penalties, motorists historically did not obey the flashing lights, authorities say. “It was hard enough for people to remember to do it on those rare occasions when bus drivers escorted kids across the street,” California Highway Patrol Officer Caley McCune said.

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And although bus drivers have had hours of training on the statute, most motorists are unaware of the new law, drivers and authorities say. The bill signed by Wilson provided no money for publicity. One company has donated a handful of billboards across the state to publicize the measure, and local authorities have tried to spread the word through the news media. A few schools are mailing letters home to parents, and some groups are recording public service announcements that they hope television stations will air.

But that has not been enough, safety advocates say.

“The public is just not aware,” said Donald Preston, district manager of Laidlaw’s Altadena yard. “Everybody is putting more importance in getting to work on time than on the safety of kids.”

Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Socorro Serrano said: “The citizens out there just aren’t in sync with it.”

Every state in the nation has a similar law, said Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), who wrote the bill and said it needs to be publicized. “We’re dealing with the safety of children,” he said.

Parents at Sierra Madre Elementary School in the town of the same name were oblivious to the law as they picked up their children one day last week. Cars weaved around halted school buses despite flashing red lights and kindergartners trundling out of the yellow behemoths.

“I normally [halt] when they’re stopping, but not when they’re parked,” Anita Liota said as she picked up her daughter. She was unaware of the law and said she probably would not normally notice a standing bus’ red lights.

“I wouldn’t notice if they were flashing,” she said. “I’d be busy looking for a parking spot.”

Steven von Schert said he was also unaware of the law, but approves of it and believes that most parents would be willing to wait for a bus to finish loading or unloading its brood. “Kids are unpredictable,” Von Schert said. “You never know when one of them is going to dart across the street.”

Yet Clemmie Spencer, a five-year veteran driver on the Laidlaw bus at Sierra Madre Elementary, said motorists have not been paying attention to her red lights.

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“That sign’s been on this bus since Day One,” she said, gesturing to the words ordering motorists to stop when the red lights flash. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

As she wound through Altadena and Pasadena picking up children for school, Spencer watched motorists speed past her bus despite the flashing red lights. On one street, a car slowed, only to be ruthlessly honked at and tailgated by the cars behind it. The car drove past the halted bus.

Another bus driver, Louisa Escandon, said: “A lot of them just pass by and don’t even notice. What can you do?”

The hundred-odd license plate numbers jotted down by the Laidlaw drivers will be passed on to the CHP. Kiefer said she hopes the motorists get warning letters in the mail. But she said the real chaos will come in the following weeks, when the final group of Los Angeles Unified campuses ends its winter vacations and streets are filled with buses ferrying students throughout the nation’s second-largest school district.

“The L.A. area’s really going to get it,” she said.