In June, the last week of school in Duluth, two school buses stopped in the Lakeside neighborhood. The first bus had its red lights flashing, its stop-arm extended, door open and was getting ready to unload students when a man driving a Chevy Silverado truck drove right by.
That’s when the driver of the second bus, who witnessed the incident, laid on the horn to get the driver’s attention. It worked. The man stopped at the second bus, “smiled and made a gesture with his hands in a ‘whoops’ motion” before continuing on.
This is just one of thousands of incidents that occur every day all over the country, including in Minnesota. In 2018, 1,052 citations were written in Minnesota for stop-arm violations. That number was 1,099 in 2017 and 1,130 in 2016, according to court records.
In Minnesota, about 2,000 bus drivers participate each year. Over the past five years, Minnesota bus drivers have tallied an average of more than 600 violations in a single day. Some of these violations have resulted in close calls.