With Maryland students returning to classrooms in the coming weeks, state transportation officials are renewing a reminder that hasn’t lost relevance in more than a decade of tracking: drivers still aren’t reliably stopping for school buses, and the consequences can be fatal.
More than 600,000 Maryland students ride a bus to and from school each day, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Administration, and officials say boarding and exiting remain the most dangerous parts of that trip — not the ride itself. Nationally, 206 school-age children died in school-transportation-related crashes between 2012 and 2021, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the large majority of those deaths involved children outside the bus, either as pedestrians or occupants of other vehicles, rather than students riding inside it.
MVA Administrator Chrissy Nizer, who also serves as Gov. Wes Moore’s highway safety representative, said stopping for a school bus is one of the most basic ways drivers can protect children this time of year. “Stopping for a school bus is the law,” Nizer said, urging motorists to slow down and remain alert near buses and school zones.
Maryland law is specific about when a stop is required. Flashing yellow lights mean a bus is preparing to stop and drivers should slow down and be ready to halt; flashing red lights and an extended stop arm require drivers to stop at least 20 feet away while children board or exit. Drivers traveling the same direction as the bus must always stop, regardless of lane count, and drivers approaching from the opposite direction must also stop unless a physical median — a grass strip, concrete barrier or guardrail — separates the roadway. Vehicles must remain stopped until the arm retracts, the lights stop flashing and the bus resumes moving.
Enforcement has increasingly shifted to automated stop-arm cameras mounted on the buses themselves, a tool state law expanded starting in 2016. A violation caught on camera carries a $250 civil citation with no points against a license; if a police officer witnesses the violation directly, the penalty rises to up to $570 and three points. Anne Arundel County alone issued more than 18,000 citations through its school bus camera program during the 2022-2023 school year, according to county police.
Statewide, the scale of the problem has fluctuated but never disappeared. When the Maryland State Department of Education began a one-day statewide count of stop-arm violations in 2011, bus drivers logged more than 7,000 violations in a single day; the count dropped as low as roughly 2,800 by 2015 before climbing back above 4,300 in more recent survey years, according to past MSDE data. Large counties with more buses and routes, including Montgomery and Baltimore County, have consistently logged the highest raw violation counts. A separate national one-day survey by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services found in 2019 that participating bus drivers nationwide logged illegal passes at a rate that, extrapolated across a full school year, would total more than a million violations.
The reminder is part of MDOT’s broader “Serious About Safety” initiative. More information on the Highway Safety Office and the state’s traffic safety efforts is available through MDOT.
