Central Texas sheriff’s office heavily monitoring traffic around school buses
GATESVILLE, Texas (KWTX) - The Coryell County Sheriff’s Office is working to increase patrol forces around school bus routes after the department received multiple complaints of drivers passing school buses when picking up and dropping off students.
“We’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from concerned parents, even the bus drivers, and the ISD’s about it,” Patrol Deputy Mike Ratterman said. “I decided to look into it a little bit more, and we’re catching a lot of people doing it. When you’re passing a school bus at 75, 80 miles an hour, Coryell County is not going to tolerate that.”
Ratterman said he made a post on Facebook addressing these complaints and concerns, specifically numerous calls about illegal passing on FM 116. The road stretches from Gatesville and through Copperas Cove. This is one of the problem areas where drivers are passing buses while kids may be getting on or off the bus.
“On FM 116, it’s It’s extremely busy,” he said. “It takes traffic all the way from Gatesville to Evant, and then you’ve got all the way out to Copperas Cove, Killeen, all those heavy, larger metro areas. The speed limit on that road is 75 miles an hour. Most people are doing 80, at least, so you definitely got to stop. I mean, there’s no reason to be passing a school bus at 75, 80 miles an hour. None whatsoever.”
“This post really helped because that really brought the community into it,” he said. “Now, we’re getting more of a much bigger picture. We’re getting people and the community is coming together and they’re saying...’Hey, they’re also doing it over here, and they’re doing it over here, and they’re doing it right here.”
He said the community’s response has helped the department develop a strategy to be proactive in protecting bus riders.
“It just lets us build our plan,” he said. “We want people to know we might not be there every day, but we’re going to be out there sooner or later.”
Ratterman said multiple buses from multiple ISD’s make several stops on rural, county roads, so they are still developing how they can monitor traffic surrounding buses.
“We don’t really have enough of us out on patrol just yet,” he said. “So, we either have to pick and choose where we’re going to go, where we’re going to check on, what we’re going to monitor from day to day. We try to change it up, and we try to be a little bit everywhere.”
Ratterman reminds drivers that they must stop on both sides of the road when a bus’s stop signs pop out and their red lights start flashing.
“The only time you can pass a school bus that has stopped loading and unloading children is if there’s a physical barrier or if there’s an area in which there’s a crosswalk for pedestrians,” he said. “Other than that, you have to stop on both sides of the road, and you cannot resume movement and you cannot proceed forward until that bus driver either waves you on, his lights go off, or that turn signal comes in.”
He said, if a driver hits and seriously injures a child while passing a stopped school bus, they could have to spend time in jail and pay hefty fines.
“If you pass a school bus and you cause serious bodily injury, that’s a Class A misdemeanor,” Ratterman said. “That’s one penalty below a felony. If you get caught on a second offense causing serious bodily injury, you’re looking at a state jail felony, a fine not less than a thousand dollars, and you can lose your license for six months.”
If you are noticing drivers illegally passing stopped school buses, Ratterman recommends calling your local law enforcement.
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