Despite the widely recognized dangers, school bus drivers in most of the country are free to chat on their cell phones – or even punch in text messages – while transporting America’s children to class and back.
In fact, only 13 states now forbid the practice, except in emergencies. And even in some of the areas where it is banned, enforcement is so spotty that citizen watchdogs and news media investigators have had no problem documenting scofflaws.
To date, none of the 25 million children who ride 475,000 school buses each school day has died as a result of a handful of wrecks tied to the drivers’ use of cell phones. But experts predict the sad inevitability that some will if there is not a concerted crackdown on the portable personal devices – including hands-free varieties.
“The only kind of communication device a bus driver should be using … is an installed portable radio. And even then we would recommend they use it while they are stopped,” said Pete Japikseis, a co-director of the American School Bus Council and a staffer at the Ohio Department of Education.
That is also the conclusion of the National Transportation Safety Board that last December called for a coast-to-coast ban. “Professional drivers who have dozens of passengers’ lives entrusted to them should devote their full attention to their task,” NTSB Mark Rosenker said.
That likely would have prevented a devastating injury to a young schoolgirl from Philadelphia. She and dozens of other children were traveling home from a field trip to the Baltimore aquarium when a tractor-trailer drifted into the school bus’ lane. The bus driver seemed oblivious, witnesses would later say.
The vehicles collided, with the impact sending the bus careening across the highway, onto the median then back across two lanes of traffic before sliding on its side onto the shoulder of Interstate 95 near Baltimore.
The force of the crash flung Deneik Brownlee, 8, out a window. The bus’ frame pinned her in a ditch, severing her right hand and shattering her elbow.
A primary contributing cause of that July 5, 2006, accident, which injured 30 children? Investigators said it was the inattention of the bus driver, who was talking on a cell phone at the time, according to a lawsuit filed in Deneik’s behalf.
So far, the only states with bans are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas. Kentucky claims the newest law, which took effect June 25. In North Carolina, a school bus cell-ban bill is now on the governors’ desk.
But it apparently can also be dangerous to follow the rules and pull off the road to make a call. In Indiana last November, an Indianapolis Public Schools bus driver stopped on the shoulder to take a phone call from her mother. As she did, a man driving a Hummer and fiddling with its radio plowed into the back of the school bus. He got the ticket in that accident.
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