You know that school age children live in your neighborhood or on your road. You probably know what time the bus picks them up in the morning. Maybe you pass it on your way to work.

What we all hope is that none of us pass a bus when the blinking, red, stop sign is extended. So, we may be surprised that since August of 2018 Transportation Director Ricky Graham has received fifteen incident reports where vehicles on Clarke County roads made the choice to pass a bus with an extended stop sign.

Fortunately for all of us no children were harmed or killed during those 15 times of people making the choice that their time was more important than any of our students’ lives.

Mr. Graham offers all of us some suggestions.

“Try to leave a few minutes earlier to allow for school or bus traffic. You know how it is in your area. If you see a school bus, you need to expect that they are probably about to stop and pick up children. If you see caution lights, slow down. Don’t speed up. That child or those children may or may not stop and look for traffic.”

He pauses, allows for the tragedy of that to sink in. Then he continues,

“When a bus stops to unload sometimes it takes a while for the students to get up and get off. If they have to cross the road, there’s a blind spot in front of that bus. Along it are red lights flashing. That means nobody moves. It’s Nathan’s Law which calls for a $475 fine in Clarke County when you run a stop sign on a school bus.”

Then Graham says, “Sometimes we think we’re in a hurry, and our time is so important. But nothing is that important.”