On Nov. 8, 2006, I was riding a motorcycle enroute to the Sheriff’s Department off Johnson Avenue. While traveling north on Jimmy Mayfield Boulevard, I planned to turn left onto Johnson Avenue.

A school bus had apparently just made the right turn off South Jeff Davis Drive onto the northbound portion of Jeff Davis Drive. After traveling just a short distance, the school bus stopped to unload some students.

Prior to ever having a chance to see the school bus, I was already focusing on the very busy two southbound lanes of Jeff Davis Drive, and also the center turn lane. Because of that focus, I had filtered out anything in the right lane.

Furthermore, from an expectation point of view, I was not expecting to encounter a school bus, since there are residences only in approximately the northeast quadrant of that intersection, and the entire rest of that area contains businesses or governmental buildings.

I certainly had no intent to pass a stopped school bus unloading passengers. I did make the left turn, and was immediately stopped by a patrolman, having gone a few feet past the nose of the stopped school bus.

I understand the policy of requiring vehicles to stop for a school bus, and I understand the value of traffic citations and fines as a deterrent to passing stopped school buses.

I believe that this situation will not be affected by the payment of fines, since the real issue is one of expectations.

Perhaps there could be signage put in place there and at other locations in Fayetteville with similar layouts, to raise the driving public’s awareness of the potential for school bus loading and unloading.

Additionally, I went to court today to pay my fine, and there I learned that there were five other cases of drivers passing a stopped school bus in just today’s court session alone. At least some of them were at this very same location.

The judge indicated that some thought was being given to either have the state put up some signs about the school bus stops, and/or the possibility of asking the school bus routing authorities to have the school bus use an alternative route for these students.

To have the school bus stop in such a place is not fair to the students due to the history of drivers not stopping, and it certainly is not fair to the drivers to have this situation forced upon them (the fine is a minimum of $280).

It is a lose-lose situation and hopefully if enough people are made aware of it, perhaps change will be brought about.

Tim Hester
timhester100 (at) comcast.net