No, this is not the solution to kids’ getting run over…
5 minute read
November 4, 2018, 2:59 PM
Last night, Elyse shared a photo with me from Facebook depicting a school bus making a stop way out in the middle of the road:
Photo: Dana Shifflett Farrar
The photo was captioned, “With the string of school bus accidents, I loved how this bus driver intentionally placed itself [sic] in the middle this morning. At first I wondered what they were doing, then I realized the kids had to cross the road. Well done, sir.” I don’t know where this specific location is, but considering that the person who posted it is from Shenandoah, Virginia, this likely depicts a location in Shenandoah County, Virginia, and as such is most likely a Shenandoah County school bus. This was likely done in reaction to recent news stories where children have been injured while going to school.
Continue reading…Categories: Honda HR-V (2018), School buses
I have been to Pennsylvania a lot lately…
14 minute read
August 27, 2016, 6:27 AM
In the span of two weeks, Elyse and I went to Pennsylvania three different times. We went to Hanover on the 8th, Harrisburg on the 11th, and then Harrisburg again on the 18th. Two of the trips were to scout out some potential sites for photography, as well as get something out of our system from the earlier bus trip, and then one was to bring the bus back for my friend.
The first trip was to Hanover. This was one of those “seeing America” kind of trips, about catching a shot of whatever we found interesting, as well as scouting locations for further attention with our SLR cameras when the weather was more accommodating (it was hot and humid out – yuck). Elyse met me at my house, and then we left for Hanover via Westminster. On the way up to Westminster, we both knew about a certain street off of Georgia Avenue in Carroll County near Eldersburg and Sykesville (yes, I refer to Route 97 as “Georgia Avenue” all the way up to Gettysburg), and had to get a photo of it with Elyse. Check it out:
Categories: Amtrak, Companies, Driving, Elyse, Food and drink, Friends, Hanover, Harrisburg, National politics, Pennsylvania, Railroads, School buses, West Virginia, Westminster
Augusta County puts enforcement cameras on its school buses…
10 minute read
May 20, 2015, 12:09 PM
I recently read in an article in The News Leader that Augusta County Public Schools, where I went to middle and high school, is partnering up with the local sheriff’s office to outfit two of its school buses with cameras. These particular cameras are mounted on the exterior of the bus, on the left side, and are designed to catch people who pass a stopped school bus while their red warning lights are flashing. Normally, drivers in all directions are supposed to come to a complete stop when the bus’s red warning lights are flashing and the stop arm is out.
Now we all know better than to think that this always happens. I’ve written about school bus stops before, in regards to whether a right turn that begins just beyond a stopped school bus and moves away from it is a legal movement, or if it’s not. I casually asked a Montgomery County police officer about this one time while I was out and about, and he said that it wasn’t a legal move, describing the area where drivers are required to come to a full stop for a school bus as being like a bubble, rather than as a line of demarcation. I would have loved for the move that I described to have been legal, because then I could just zip past and be on my way. But apparently, it’s not.
Also, for those of you who have never driven a large vehicle before, let me let you in on something: if you think that the people around you drive like wackos when you’re in your car, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve watched drivers around a large vehicle. The “wacko” factor gets turned up to eleven when you’re driving a large vehicle. After all, large vehicles are very different than your car. They’re big, they’re heavy, and they’re slow. And in the case of school and transit buses, they make frequent stops. Drivers in cars know that, and as such, will do anything, even some very unsafe/illegal moves, to get past or otherwise not have to wait for a bus. I have been cut off in just about every way imaginable when I’m driving the bus, and I don’t get special privileges like school buses get, i.e. I don’t get to stop all traffic when I’m boarding and alighting passengers. And even if I could, fellow road users are still very poorly behaved and would stop at nothing to get past or around me while I was stopped, threat of ticket or not.
Categories: Driving, School buses, Transit, Virginia local news