LAKE CO., Ind. — Can your kids cross the street safely when they get on and off the school bus?
A Northwest Indiana lawmaker is trying to make the walk across the street worry-free.
State Sen. Rick Niemeyer said he’s seen hundreds of violations of people running school bus stop-arms in his district, and most went unpunished.
“One school district, in particular, has almost 250 stop-arm violations in a year’s time,” said Niemeyer. “Nothing happened, nobody got hurt.”
However, he says there has to be a better way to protect the children and bus drivers, and stop people from running the stop-arms.
That’s why his bill would make it easier for police to issue fines to drivers who blow past extended stop-arms.
He said the bill would allow police to send a ticket to the owner of the car involved in the violation, instead of police having to identify the driver and then charging them.
“But somebody has to be responsible,” he said. “and this saying, ‘we can’t see the driver,’ one thing we can see for sure is the vehicle and the license plate number on that vehicle going around that stop-arm.”
Niemeyer said the owner of the car would get the chance to prove it wasn’t their car, or they weren’t the one driving.
