Personal Injury Law

School Bus Death Reported

Our Atlanta wrongful death attorneys have represented the families of children seriously injured or killed while exiting school buses. Just today, the Atlanta media is reporting that a five year old child was killed when an elderly driver attempted to pass a stopped school bus.

The law in Georgia governing driver actions when approaching or overtaking a school bus is very clear. Ga. Code Ann., § 40-6-163 provides as follows:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) of this Code section, the driver of a vehicle meeting or overtaking from either direction any school bus stopped on the highway shall stop before reaching such school bus when there are in operation on the school bus the visual signals as specified in Code Sections 40-8- 111and 40-8-115, and such driver shall not proceed until the school bus resumes motion or the visual signals are no longer actuated.

(b) The driver of a vehicle upon a highway with separate roadways need not stop upon meeting or passing a school bus which is on a different roadway, or upon a controlled-access highway when the school bus is stopped in a loading zone which is a part of or adjacent to such highway and where pedestrians are not permitted to cross the roadway.

(c) Every school bus driver who observes a violation of subsection (a) of this Code section is authorized and directed to record specifically the vehicle description, license number of the offending vehicle, and time and place of occurrence on forms furnished by the Department of Public Safety. Such report shall be submitted within 15 days of the occurrence of the violation to the local law enforcement agency which has law enforcement jurisdiction where the alleged offense occurred.

What may not be clear to some is that all vehicles on a four lane road must stop when the bus has activated the visual stop signals. This is true for driver going in both directions. The only exception is for traffic flowing in the opposite direction on highways divided by a concrete barrier or grass median.

If you have any doubt as to stop or not, please err on the side of caution and stop. The tragic consequences are not worth a few minutes saved in travel time.

Full post as published by Georgia Injury Lawyer Blog on December 10, 2009 (boomark / email).