It’s the first day of school and that means school buses are on the road, and drivers need to stop when their flashing lights are activated.
Pierre Ranger, chair of the Let’s Remember Adam campaign, says the number of incidents of people not stopping for the bus seems to rise every year, and this year he hopes they don’t.
“This year I hope we have an opening day, the first day of school, with no incidents in our area,” he says. “But, in the past we’ve always had more and more incidents every opening day.”
Pierre’s brother Adam was killed when a truck failed to stop for his school bus in Feb. 2000 in Mattawa.
“We push this message to try and make sure no one else has to go through this,” he says. “Not only for the family that lost the child but for the person, if you were to strike a child with your vehicle, your life is done too. You’ll never recover from that.”
Ranger says if you see a school bus while driving, you need to pay a lot more attention to what’s going on around you and stop for the bus if the lights are activated.
“These aren’t on the road 24-7, they’re on at the same time, every day, twice a day, during the same months,” he says. “This shouldn’t be hard.”
Penalties for not stopping for a school bus include fines, demerit points and possible jail time on subsequent offences.
