THUNDER BAY – At least eight motorists a day, on average, are ignoring flashing red lights on school buses in Thunder Bay.
It’s an alarming number, say bus drivers and police, and it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes and a child is badly hurt or killed.
Since the start of the new school year, including 18 new incidents that occurred on Thursday, 212 drivers have been reported for ignoring the flashing red lights, which motorists are legally required to stop for until students are safely off the street and out of harm’s way.
The risk of a $490 fine and six demerit points on their licence doesn’t seem to be enough of a deterrent to drivers, whose failure-to-stop rate has doubled over last year’s average.
It’s got to end, said acting traffic Sgt. Tom Anderson.
“I would like to think that it’s obvious to folks that when there’s a school bus stopped and the red lights are flashing, they’ll just stop,” Anderson said. “But for some reason, whether people are distracted or not paying attention or are unaware… it seems to be an issue.”
Police can only do so much to get messaging out to the public. After that, it’s on motorists to obey the law.
Anderson added a fine can also be levied against the owner of the vehicle, even if the driver can’t be identified.
Driver Tom Saarimaki is doing his best to track the information, saying he’s had 43 incidents already this year, with school barely over a month in.
“Luckily all the ones I had, all my students are getting off on the right-hand side of the bus, but one day somebody is going to come on the right-hand side or even rear-end the bus when we’re stopped because people are just not paying attention,” Saarimaki.
Craig Murphy, who heads the school bus consortium, said it’s a disturbing trend, but not one that hasn’t been a problem in the past.
“Vehicles passing school buses has been a problem for a very long time. Back in 2019 we started a program where we asked school bus drivers, as a volunteer program, to let us know when vehicles passed school buses,” Murphy said.
It’s not an easy task, especially when trying to control the movements of students on and off a school bus.
“We want to know when and where it’s happening. We’ve been tracking it now for three years. Last year was the first full school year and we had 658 vehicles pass stopped school buses, which averages out to about four times per school day,” Murphy said.
“So far this year we’ve had 212 vehicles pass schools buses and that’s averaging out to eight per day. We’re looking at so far this year double the occurrences, and this is only from drivers that volunteer the information. We’re confident it happens quite a bit more."
Murphy said Student Transportation Services and the local school boards have asked city council to approve the use of stop-arm cameras on school buses. A report is expected to be brought before council in December.
“We first approached the intergovernmental affairs committee with the city back in 2019 with the idea of introducing cameras on local school buses,” he said. “At that time it was just being introduced in the province… and the regulations were still not written.”
Murphy said the Highway Traffic Act has been amended to allow school-bus cameras, and now it’s up to the municipality to give the go-ahead.
“We’re very hopeful that we can finally move forward with it.”
