If you’re like most parents, your children go to the public schools. There are other valid options, including homeschooling and private schooling, but today’s article is for how the majority of children are educated in the United States (and in most countries beyond these borders). Furthermore, many to most kids around the US who attend public schools do so through the school bus. I’m a fan of school buses. Statistically, they are by far the safest way to transport children to school (yes, safer than driving them yourself, walking them, having them walk themselves, or having them ride themselves).
Are school buses perfect? Not by a long shot
That said, there are a number of unresolved issues in school bus safety in the United States. One is the lack of seat belts, which we’ll discuss another day. Another is the propensity of children to be run over by the buses themselves, which we also won’t discuss today. A third involves children’s tendencies to be hit by other vehicles when the buses themselves are stopped. This is today’s topic, and as with the second issue, it most commonly involves the bus route, or the bus stop.
The majority of kids who are casualties in situations involving school buses are casualties outside the buses, not inside them. Sometimes they’re killed or injured by the buses due to standing or crossing in front of the buses when the buses are ready to take off. But a great many times, they’re hurt because the bus routes that serve their neighborhoods result in a need to cross traffic to reach the bus stop itself, which is where the bus is located.
Bus stops that require children to cross streets are death traps
This is dangerous. At times, this is deadly. This is why I taught you how to force your school district to change such policies immediately by raising the spectre of legal liability. And unfortunately, the case of Xzavier Ingle, Mason Ingle, Alivia Stahl, and Maverik Lowe shows just what can happen when school districts are allowed to get away with such awful bus stops.
How did these children die at the hands of Alyssa Shepherd?
On October 30th, 2018, 24-year old Alyssa Shepherd drove her husband, Neil, to work at approximately 7 AM in Rochester, Indiana. She had her younger brother and two children in her current-generation Toyota Tacoma with her, and was apparently en route to her mother’s house to drop off her brother. Per her testimony, it was “pitch black” outside. She approached a set of flashing lights in the distance on Indiana 25 and was, per her attorney, confused about what she saw, but apparently continued heading toward it at 45 mph. What she was actually approaching was an extended stop sign from a school bus waiting to pick up Xzavier, Mason, Alivia, and Maverik. They lived in a mobile home complex and were required to cross the highway to get to the bus waiting on the other side of the street. It appears Shepherd was westbound while the bus was parked on the south side of the street facing east. The children needed to cross the street southbound to reach the bus. It was a two-lane highway. Shepherd did not stop. She did not appear to slow down whatsoever. There were witnesses, including the bus driver, who reportedly honked his horn in vain to alert her. She hit all four children. One flew 30 feet in the air (Lowe, who survived with critical injuries, including fractures in his ribs, patella, arms, wrist, and legs, in addition to slipped spinal disks close to his neck). The other three children were killed.
The driver was not the only one at fault; the decision to place the stop on the opposite side of the street was that of the school district
While the responsibility for directly hitting the children squarely lies with Ms. Shepherd, who was sentenced to 4 years in prison in December 2019, the responsibility for the atrocious placement of the bus stop lies squarely with the school district. It doesn’ t take a psychic to understand it would not have been placed there for a second had the mobile housing complex (i.e., the trailer park) been a subdivision filled with wealthy, powerful parents. That’s not how this country works. The powerful have voices. The powerful have choices. The rest of us are thrown to the wolves (or at least have our children cross high speed traffic to get to safe modes of transportation). The school district moved the stop after the crash, of course. They always do. But wouldn’t it have made sense for the stop to have been placed in the complex to begin with?
Of course. That’s how things are done in rich neighborhoods, and that’s how things are done in countries that place much higher priorities than ours on child safety (as well as the safety of adults navigating the dangers of auto traffic). It wasn’t done here because the school district didn’t want to do the extra work of setting up the bus stop in the complex. Perhaps it would have involved adhering to ever-so-slightly higher construction standards. Perhaps it would have resulted in a need to talk to the complex’s owners. Perhaps it would simply have added two minutes to the bus route due to the bus’ need to enter the complex and reorient itself facing out. I’m guessing this was the core reason, and the fact that the population served there was not a powerful one was the underlying justification–whether at a conscious or subconscious level–for placing the stop on the other side of a 55-mph trafficked road.
It sounds insane, doesn’t it?
This is why we advocate for changes
This is why this site exists. Because it’s far better to have better policies put into place when children are living, rather than after they’re dead. But when you live in a country, a state, or a city or town that doesn’t prioritize the lives of people over non-people things (such as profits or property or auto traffic), the next best thing to do is to educate yourself. It’s how you defend yourself in today’s society. And if you’re ever asked to put your children in harm’s way for the convenience of your school district, you write that letter, and you read it loud and clear to the school board or district. They might not care about your child, but they’ll certainly care about the legal implications of acknowledging they were warned about risks to life and limb and refused to act in a timely manner.
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