With students back in the classroom, activity around schools will be getting more and more busy as we head towards fall. Because of the added pedestrian and bus traffic, AAA is once again giving drivers a reminder to look out for students who are heading to or from school, something that they have been doing for several years now.
"AAA has long been an advocate for safety on the roads from our very beginning, and keeping the kids safe just goes with our stance on traffic safety," said Cindy Nelson, store manager for Lima AAA. "It’s something that’s very important to each community and to AAAs across the country."
The state of Ohio is no stranger to crashes involving students 18 and younger: numbers from the Ohio Department of Transportation show that over the last five years, over 4,500 crashes involving pedestrians 18 and younger have happened, resulting in 126 deaths.
And so to help prevent a tragedy like this from happening close to home, those with Lima City Schools urge drivers to be patient with the extra traffic and to not pass school buses that are picking up or dropping kids off.
"It’s very important that drivers honor these red stoplights on these buses, and do not drive around them," said Jill Ackerman, superintendent of Lima City Schools. "We have cameras on our stop arms, so we do get a photograph of the driver and the license plate and we will turn that over to the Lima Police Department because it’s very dangerous."
Along with following up on those bus passing complaints, the Lima Police Department is also focusing their patrol on speed violations around school zones as students head back to school.
"We as motorists, as drivers, need to be willing to slow things down so that we can be better prepared because if something happens in front of us we are going to be the responsible ones and we’re going to be able to stop in time so that we’re not harming a child," said Lima Police Chief Kevin Martin.
"How can a child have a good quality of life if that life is taken away from them because of a tragic traffic crash."
