GLENELG, Md. — School bus drivers not only have to worry about the safety on the children aboard, but also aggressive motorists trying to speed around them.
Now, Maryland State Police are warning motorists to abide by the road rules or get penalized.
Every time school bus drivers pull out of the lot and run their routes, they feel immense pressure.
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“We are driving a 33,000-pound vehicle everyday, and when we look in our rearview mirror, we are responsible for everyone’s child that’s on our bus,” said Mindy Roche, a school bus driver in Howard County for the past seven years.
Driving a school bus is a job made that much more difficult when other drivers jockey to get around them.
“It’s hard to get people to look and pay attention and stop for the bus,” added Jason Mullinix, another veteran driver with Bowen’s Bus Service in Glenelg. “A lot of times, you turn your yellow lights on and you can see that the car is speeding up.”
In a typical school year, more than 600,000 students in the state will ride a school bus, and Maryland State Police want to remind other drivers the rules of the road when it comes to school bus safety.
“When they see those signals — the flashing lights, the extended stop arm, that is a signal for the motorists to stop within at least 20 feet of that school bus,” said Maryland State Police Spokesperson Elena Russo.
Most buses are now equipped with cameras, and if a driver is captured on video passing the bus while it’s stopped, they will be fined $250.
That fine jumps up to $570 and three points off of their license if an officer witnesses the violation and pulls them over.
They are serious penalties for jeopardizing the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
“You see these signs now that say, ‘Drive like your kids live here’, you know that should be pretty much anywhere and everywhere, in the morning and the afternoon especially while the buses are doing their thing,” Mullinix said.
