School Bus Law Doesn’t Stop ‘em All

In the last three months, Santa Ana police have issued 155 tickets to motorists who whizzed by school buses, ignoring flashing red lights and pop-out stop signs. One car even ripped the sign from the bus.

In Garden Grove, police are regularly issuing tickets, which carry $406 fines. Though police say many motorists stop, many others continue to disregard the year-old law that requires them to halt whenever school buses signal that children are boarding or leaving.

Such enforcement problems have spurred Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncan Mills), whose amendment weakening the state law last summer was vetoed by former Gov. Pete Wilson. She reintroduced her bill Thursday.

“One of the arguments last year--understandably--was that drivers needed to get used to it,” said Lorraine Albrecht, Strom-Martin’s legislative director. “Well, it’s been a year. The same problems persist, and drivers still are not used to it.”

Many motorists have complained that the law unnecessarily inconveniences them. Some drivers have been rear-ended when stopping to observe the law, and others have been penalized with high fines for what they say is simple ignorance.

In Los Angeles, the only drivers who stop for buses are other bus drivers, said Clarence Hutchinson, president of the local chapter of the California Assn. of Transportation Officials.

“I think some form of the law would work, but what they tried to do was overkill,” Hutchinson said. “I mean, if you look at statistics, our safety record is a lot better than other states that have had that law in place.”

Also, bus drivers in Los Angeles escort students in kindergarten through high school whenever they need to cross the street. “That’s something that no other state has,” he said.

Thomas Lanni, the Irvine man who pushed for the legislation after his son Tommy was killed in 1994 by a passing motorist after leaving a school bus, says motorists have to get used to the law.

“All other 49 states have pretty much the same law and it works just fine,” Lanni said. “It’s not chaos and there is not carnage in the road. The problem is that conditioning the driving public to stop for the bus is going to take some time.”

After the law, named after Lanni’s son, became effective Jan. 1, 1998, few motorists seemed to stop for the flashing red lights, Lanni said. Over the months, though, drivers slowly began catching on, he said.

The law requires school bus drivers to turn on blinking red lights each time they load and unload children. Previously, bus drivers had to turn on flashing lights only when helping children cross the street.

At one Santa Ana intersection, where dozens of children caught the school bus Wednesday to nearby Marshall Elementary School, about half the motorists stopped at the flashing red lights.

Eloisa Martinez stood at the corner of First and North Susan streets later that afternoon waiting for her 6-year-old son, Batner, to arrive. After the bus stopped and red lights flashed, she noticed few cars stopped as they should, but she was not too concerned.

“We really don’t have problems here because none of the children have to cross the street,” she said, hugging Batner. “I think this corner is very safe.”

Marta Rodriguez, waiting for her son Justin to arrive, agreed.

“See, all these children live right here,” she gestured to a large apartment building behind her. “They just get off the bus and walk right in the front door.”

Though many motorists obey the law, school officials and police say just as many don’t stop.

“We still have a lot of complaints [from bus drivers], and we were ticketing real heavy,” said Santa Ana Unified School District Police Chief Jim Miyashiro. “Whenever there’s a problem, we go out there the next couple of days and usually it will slow down.

“There are still a lot of people who don’t follow the law,” he said. “I think the majority of them do know, but they just don’t want to wait that extra five minutes.”

School districts have tried to inform motorists through mailings and public service announcements on local cable stations.

“People who have students in school are more aware than the general public because it affects those parents,” said Nancy Malone, transportation director for Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

“But the rest of the motorists just are not paying attention,” she said. “They’re so focused on what’s inside their car or on the phone that they’re not seeing the big picture.”

Strom-Martin’s bill would eliminate the use of blinking lights in front of schools and would not require them when a bus driver has to take several minutes to help a disabled student onto the bus. Those are changes Lanni can accept.

The sticking points, however, are exemptions that prohibit use of the blinkers within 200 feet of a signal light and on any high-speed road with two or more lanes in each direction.

Those changes would effectively gut the law, Lanni has argued.

Lanni says he will gear up once again to go to Sacramento and fight any loosening of the law.

“I am so frustrated with the inability of the people who are responsible for our children’s safety to say ‘How can we make this work?’ Instead they keep trying to get rid of [the law],” he said.

“I’m not going to profit from this--I don’t have stock in flashing red lights,” Lanni said. “We’re trying to prevent this from happening to other kids.”