YANCEYVILLE, N.C. -- Some young people are risking their lives to get to school; are their bus stops part of the problem?
Since 1999, 13 students in North Carolina have been killed while getting on or off their school bus.
The driver is usually to blame, but is that always the case? Is it possible the bus stop plays a part?
WFMY News 2 is digging into bus stop safety, and what school districts are doing to protect your kids.
Some parents and neighbors along Highway 86, in Caswell County, are worried about bus stops in their area. The speed limit is 55 mph, and some students have to cross the busy highway to get to their bus stop.
Christopher Wood, a 13-year-old Dillard Middle School student learned the dangers of Highway 86 the hard way.
In March, he was crossing the highway to get on his bus around 6:15 a.m. A driver sped past the stopped school bus and hit him as he crossed the street.
The driver never stopped.
"He could have just stopped and waited," Wood said. "I could have just gone on with my life. I wouldn't be in a wheelchair right now. I could be walking, and wouldn't have two holes in my leg. I wouldn't have had to go through what I went through."
Fortunately, state troopers caught the driver later that day, and Wood survived.
Just down the road, James Poole says he isn't taking any chances with his grandchildren's safety.
"It's a busy stretch through here this time of morning," he said. "Tractor trailers, trucks, cars, speeders."
His grandchildren's bus stop is also across the street from his house. So, instead of letting his grandchildren cross the busy highway, Poole drives them across the street every morning.
Dr. Brock Womble, superintendent for Caswell County Schools, says it usually takes a complaint from a parent or bus driver to get a bus stop moved.
"There are always opportunities you would like to improve on the bus stop location," Womble said. "Any time [a student is] crossing the road, that's not ideal, and we try to minimize that as much as possible."
Womble says the school district decides bus stops each summer, and the process starts with a computer.
"We put in the students' addresses where they're going to be picked up," Womble said. "And, from that point, it creates a route, and from that route that's been created, we then make modifications on it based on local knowledge."
We wanted to know if there's anything the state can do to help with the problem some parents are having.
"The state law is pretty basic, honestly," said Derek Graham, section chief for Transportation Services for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. "It says a school bus has to be routed within a mile of the student's residence."
Graham says the law leaves decisions about bus stops up to individual districts.
"In many respects, it has to be case-by-case because of the many different geographies we have across the state," he said. "There are places where we have sidewalks for kids to walk, places where there are no sidewalks."
One thing lawmakers can do to help, is to make it safer for students to get on and off their buses.
Right now, Guilford County Schools is the first school district in the nation to test a new bus stop arm model. The new arms are four feet longer than normal.
In Raleigh, a law is in the works that would allow the state to fine drivers who pass stopped school buses by simply getting a picture of their license plate.
