Lifestyle

Viral Video Of Near Miss Proves Drivers Need To Slow The Heck Down In School Zones

by Maria Guido
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Image via CTV Toronto

Video of car almost hitting student crossing the street goes viral

A video has gone viral this week of a scary incident that happened last month, when a student got off the bus, but didn’t cross the street immediately. There are several things that went wrong in this video, but the biggest takeaway is slow the hell down when you are in a school zone or near a school bus with children around it.

Ten-year-old Rebecca Hiller was crossing the street on September 29th when she was nearly hit by a car. A short snippet of the incident has since gone viral:

CTV News Toronto has more footage from a nearby security camera that shows the whole incident. The young girl got off the bus, but was talking to some friends so she missed crossing with the bulk of the kids who had gotten off. The driver pulled back the stop sign, but when Rebecca moved to cross, waved her along anyway. At that moment, a car sped around the bus and nearly hit Rebecca.

So many things went wrong here. The bus driver should not have pulled the stop sign back until the kids were done crossing, and he definitely should not have waved her into the street without looking. The little girl should have looked before she crossed the road. Most of all, the car should have slowed down around the school bus that had just let kids off.

It really doesn’t matter that all three people involved in this incident were all at fault — only one of them was operating a moving vehicle that can kill someone. If you are in a school zone, or around a school bus that is letting children off, slow the hell down.

No one was charged, because no one broke the law. According to police who were interviewed, the driver passed the bus after the lights had been deactivated, which is legal. This incident happened in Canada, and in the US laws differ state to state, but just because the stop sign has been pulled in, doesn’t mean you should pass a bus that’s about to get moving again. Is the small amount of time it’s going to take for the bus to get moving again really that long to wait?

People forget how dangerous their cars are. You are essentially driving a weapon. Seeing people blow through my son’s school zone every day makes my blood boil. Every day an average of 44 kids are hit while walking, many while on their way to school. The speed limit is admittedly very slow in school zones. It’s 15 MPH on the blocks surrounding my son’s school. There’s a reason for that:

a child’s life is more important than your need to speed along.

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