Sen. Lisa Baker (R-20)<\/a> said the legislation is intended to help protect kids heading to and coming home from school.<\/p>\n\u201cEvery child deserves to get to and from school safely, and motorists have a responsibility to stop when a school bus is loading or unloading students,\u201d said Baker. \u201cAct 89 is about changing driver behavior and holding repeat offenders accountable. We owe it to our children and their families to take this responsibility seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, PennDOT’s Automated School Bus Enforcement Program recorded 76,413 violations, a more than 300% increase from the 24,085 in 2023, a news release noted.<\/p>\n
While the violation increase can also be attributed to an increase in enforcement, the numbers show the ongoing challenge of making sure drivers stop for school buses, according to Pennsylvania Senate Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis important legislation sends a clear message that putting children\u2019s lives at risk will not be tolerated,\u201d said Gerry Wosewick, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Bus Association. \u201cEvery child deserves to board and leave their school bus safely. This law is an important step toward keeping our students safe and holding dangerous drivers accountable. We thank Sen. Baker for her persistence in making student safety a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
The changes to stopping distance and enhanced penalties go into effect in one year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PENNSYLVANIA (WHP) \u2014 A new Pennsylvania law will increase the required stopping distance when a school bus is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-315993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}