Keep the roads safe for everyone
The wheels on the bus go round and round. Round and round. Round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round. All through the town.
It stops for the children with its lights flashing bright, lights flashing bright, lights flashing bright. It stops for the children with its lights flashing bright, early in the morning.
The children boarding the bus go crunch, bang, splat. Crunch, bang, splat. Crunch, bang, splat.
The children on the bus go crunch, bang, splat — when other drivers hurry.
Lives are lost and tears are shed. Lives are lost and tears are shed. Lives are lost and tears are shed, when people ignore the laws.
The end of August is here. Throughout the state parents and children are getting excited for the start of the new school year. Pencils are being sharpened, classrooms decorated, and backpacks loaded with supplies.
The start of the new school year is a time of excitement for youngsters and their families.
It is also a time of danger for those same children.
In the coming weeks, young people will be crossing roads and climbing the stairs to get on school buses each morning with the expectation that they will get there safely. Hours later, buses with pull up to houses and students will come running down those stairs, ready to share the excitement of their first day at school.
This idyllic scene can quickly turn to tragedy through carelessness and distraction by other motorists on the road. According to the National High Traffic Safety Administration, while school buses are considered one of the overall safest forms of travel, in 2024 there were 12,532 crashes involving school buses. Just over half of those crashes resulted in injuries with 171 crashes resulting in death. Wisconsin is among the safest states with “just” 197 bus-related crashes last year, 84 of them resulting in injuries and 3 reported deaths statewide.
These statistics are sobering and speak to the ongoing need for all drivers to use additional care when on the roads at the start of the school year and all year long.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies three kinds of distracted driving — visual, where drivers take their eyes from the road; manual, where they take their hands off the wheel to fiddle with controls and screens; and cognitive, where their minds are distracted by anything from worrying about being late to work or news briefs of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce getting engaged.
Add these distractions together with a bit of speed and willful ignorance and you have a recipe for disaster. Things become especially dangerous when children are getting into and unloading from buses. The Wisconsin School Bus Association estimates that there are a staggering 861,336 illegal passes of school buses in the state each year.
Drivers are reminded to stop on the street or highway 20 feet or more from any school bus that has stopped and is flashing red warning lights. This applies to all traffic on the two-lane roads common throughout this region with the only exceptions being for divided highways with a center median. Vehicles may not proceed until a bus resumes motion and turns off its warning lights.
As the school year starts, slow down, leave extra time to get to your destination and most of all avoid distractions. All motorists must do their part to keep our roads safe and prevent tragedies from happening.
