When West Towson Elementary School first-grader Trevor Atkinson bounded off a school bus Friday afternoon on York Road, his mother, Nicole, was waiting — and so were two police cruisers sitting together in the middle of a residential side street.
As Atkinson said she has seen all too often, many motorists didn't stop behind the bus when it stopped, as they are legally required to do. Instead, they sped past it, some well over the speed limit of 35 miles per hour.
But then, Atkinson and other parents at the bus stop saw something they don't see often enough. The Baltimore County police cruisers took off southbound after a speeding car and pulled it over.
The same thing had happened that morning when police stopped a motorist at the same spot, Atkinson and other parents said.
"Twice in one day," observed parent Christopher Jakubiak happily.
"That's a solid victory," Atkinson said.
The parents, whose children attend West Towson Elementary School, are among many who have complained for as long as two years about law-breaking motorists at York Road between Yorkleigh and LaPaix roads, where the bus stop and a crosswalk are. But they say that until recently, police have done little about the offense of passing a stopped school bus.
"It's been going on like this" since her son was in kindergarten, Atkinson said. "We're out there twice a day," in the morning when the bus picks up students, and in the afternoon when the bus drops off the children. Parents meet in a parking lot across York Road from Ascension Lutheran Church, and Atkinson, afraid as much for herself as for Trevor, stands a good 20 feet back from the road.
The previous Friday, Feb. 6, Atkinson said she watched helplessly as five cars "flew past our bus" and an MTA bus almost did likewise before stopping alongside the stopped school bus.
"We've had really bad accidents" she said, near the bus stop, including last fall, when there was a two-car collision just as Trevor was stepping off the bus. Atkinson said she lives a tenth of a mile away.
But Friday the 13th was unlucky for speeding motorists. The police cruisers were sitting side by side on Yarmouth Road, across the street. One of the cruisers even had its lights on, but the drivers seemed to take no notice as they sped past the school bus.
Even Atkinson, a home-based publicist who has complained to police and the school's PTA, was surprised by the police presence. Minutes earlier, standing in the parking lot waiting for the bus to arrive as school let out a half-day early, she said, "I'm just a concerned parent on a rampage. because it's driving us crazy. I'm just trying to bring it to the surface."
And she said parents of children at nearby Rodgers Forge Elementary have complained about the same problem at a bus stop near that school.
'Routine problem'
Atkinson is not the only one raising a fuss.
"There's a sufficient problem there to have prompted us to reach out to the police on multiple occasions," said Andy McCallion, whose daughter, Iona, is a third-grader at West Towson Elementary. McCallion said he has seen motorists pass the stopped school bus while talking or texting on their cellphones or checking their appearance in the rear view mirror.
He cited "the potential for absolutely horrific consequences," and said, "If anything, this is symptomatic of a larger problem."
McCallion, associate professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said he doesn't think motorists are being wantonly disobedient, but need to be educated or reminded about school bus safety laws.
"I personally don't believe that people are doing it to knowingly hurt children," he said, but added, "This is something to be seen as being as socially unacceptable as smoking in a restaurant or drinking and driving. I think the more attention we bring, the more socially unacceptable it will become."
Capt. Jay Landsman of the Towson police precinct said he is aware of the problem and was manning one of the police cars Friday that pulled over a PT Cruiser after it passed the stopped school bus.
"Everybody's in a hurry," Landsman said. He said police want to send a message to the public to "take your time and yield to the bus," and that they chose Friday afternoon to make their presence known in earnest, partly because school was getting out early.
The offense carries a $570 fine.
"It's definitely one that's meant to leave a sting," Landsman said.
"We will continue to do enforcement," Landsman said. He said he won't post officers at one particular bus stop or intersection every day, but that his traffic officers will monitor bus routes regularly.
The county public school system knows of the problem, and transportation officials are warning school bus drivers to be careful, "because more drivers seems to be passing," school system spokesman Mychael Dickerson said. But he said that unless the bus driver reads and remembers or writes down the license plate number of the offending car, "there's no way for us to capture it."
A state pilot program is in effect, which places cameras outside school buses, but the program is only being tried in Frederick, Md., and Montgomery County, said Jim Mitcherling, transportation director for Baltimore County schools.
He said school system officials have talked about using the cameras as "another tool in the tool box," but so far has not done so," mostly due to costs. The school system has 886 buses and 112 contracted routes, he said.
Mitcherling said the transportation department evaluates school bus stops and lets police know "that this is going on. We hear about it on a frequent basis," he said.
He said all bus drivers are trained to get a license plate number when they can and to fill out a form and fax it to police.
A one-day annual survey in August 2014 by the Maryland State Department of Education at the request of members of the state legislature found that motorists "continue to ignore the stop-arms on school buses at an alarming rate," according to a press release that was issued at the time.
"Stop-arms swing out from a bus and lights flash whenever it is making an on-roadway student pick-up," the release stated."A total of 3,505 violations of school bus stop-arms were recorded on a single day last spring.The rate is up more than 100 from 3,392 violations recorded last year, but remains sharply lower than the rate found in the initial survey in 2011, when more than 7,000 violations were recorded.
At the bus stop on York Road, Jakubiak, picking up high daughters, Anna, 8 and Natalie, 10, called it "a routine problem."
"It's time for Towson to tighten up," he said. "This really is a community issue."