What’s the rush, indeed
-
- October
- 23
The results are in — dozens of motorists zip past stopped school buses loading
and unloading their young passengers. Here’s today’s report from our Albany Bureau on the result of a 40-day program that put cameras in school buses in Brewster, Bethlehem and Canandaigua. Each district had just one camera. That camera recorded 22 illegal passes in Canandaigua, 20 illegal passes in Bethlehem and four illegal passes in Brewster, according to today’s article.
When this program, called Operation Safe Stop, was unveiled in April, I looked into the issue for an editorial we published under the headline, “What’s the rush?” The statistics were pretty shocking. Around New York, motorists pass stopped school buses at least 50,000 times each year, safety officials say. That’s 50,000 potential tragedies. Another way to slice it: Every day, an average 1.72 vehicles pass a school bus during its stops, according to data collected from drivers by Peter Mannella, executive director, New York Association for Pupil Transportation.
Jack Coxen, transportation supervisor for Brewster schools, explained that the motion sensitive cameras was to be installed on a bus that would take alternate routes. Four drivers snagged in Brewster may seem like a small number, but that’s just on one bus a day, in just 40 days.
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm by Nancy Cutler.
| 
Email This Post
GREAT IDEA. DO IT. JUST LIKE SPIKES ON EXITS THAT WOULD PREVENT WRONG WAY DRIVERS, OR DEVICES THAT WOULD PREVENT DRUNK DRIVERS FROM STARTING THIER CARS. THESE ARE ALL SENSIBLE IDEAS THAT WOULD PREVENT TRAGEDIES.