VICTORIA -- It’s videos captured by cameras mounted on School District 62’s buses that have bus drivers in the West Shore concerned for the lives of the children that ride their buses.
“It’s rampant, it’s everywhere,” said Kerry Zado who is a school bus driver for the district.
Zado is a retired firefighter, now turned school bus driver. He says motorists are ignoring flashing lights and stop signals to pass buses as they unload children on the side of the road every day.
“You play Russian roulette and sooner or later you’re going to lose,” said Zado.
School bus drivers are required to activate their lights when loading and unloading students from the bus, which allows children to cross the road safely.
“Unfortunately, the public is not identifying with the red lights and they are assuming that they can go through,” said Tracey Syrota, manager of transportation for SD62. “They should be stopping because saving that one to two seconds is not worth a child’s life.”
When those drivers are caught on camera breaking the law, the district has been forwarding the video evidence to RCMP.
“We do this for all the ones that we can see the licence plates because then they are positively identified,” said Syrota.
If the RCMP catches up with you, expect a hefty fine.
“It’s a $368 fine,” said Cpl. Mike Jacobson, West Shore RCMP municipal traffic supervisor. “There’s three penalty points associated with that as well.”
Zado is fed up and thinks it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens, after all the near-tragedies he’s witnessed.
“I saw a kid one day cross in front of my bus,” said Zado. “He stopped to take a look down the side of the bus to make sure there was no cars coming as a car went flying by.”
“Had he not stopped to look, he would have been smoked and there was nothing I could have done about it,” he said.
He’s pleading with drivers to obey the rules of the road, before someone gets seriously hurt, or worse.