Hank Investigates: Dangerous Drivers

You know what's supposed to happen. It's the law: when the stop sign arm comes out, drivers in all directions must stop. Sign comes out, driver stops, kids safely cross the street.

Now watch: a blue four door is about to come toward the bus. The stop arm comes out, kids start to get off. Look at the car. It doesn't even pause.

Watch again: caught on tape.

Bus Driver
"I just can't understand why they don't stop. What if their kid got hit?"

Another day, another bus. Another driver caught on tape.

Hank
"That driver just went through your stop sign."

Bus Driver
"That's right."

Hank
"Does that happen every day?"

Bus Driver
"It happens every day."

And our investigation found it's unlikely those out of control drivers will ever get caught. And if they do the penalties are minimal.

Jim Ryan, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
"It's an epidemic in the Commonwealth and it's an epidemic problem everywhere."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the moments that a child steps into the street are the most dangerous. When it comes to school bus accidents, that's where two out of three kids are killed.

Jim Ryan
"To run a school bus stop arm you're risking killing somebody's baby, putting your own life in hell for the rest of your being, and that is really the bottom line."

That's why Carol Hathaway of North Andover mass is counting her blessings. In 1998 she rushed to an accident. Her son, then 13, was hit by a car as he was getting off his school bus.

Carol Hathaway
"They put my child on an ambulance and it's a terrifying feeling, its every parent's worst nightmare to see their child hurt."

So when your children get on the bus, what will happen to them? We hooked up bus cams in several towns, and everywhere we saw cars screech to a stop, or just barrel on through.

Look at this car, and this one.

Bus Driver
"It's scary. It's just very scary for us bus drivers."

Drivers can fight back. If they get a plate number, they can report it to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. And guess how many complaints are in registry files from the past four years?

Ten thousand. Yes, ten thousand! What's scarier: imagine how many get away.

Hank
"Of 10 people who run your stop sign, how many do you catch?"

Bus Driver
"Maybe one, two of them."

Hank
"So eight or nine of them get away?"

Bus Driver
"They're gone."

We showed our bus cam tapes to Registrar Dan Grabauskas.

Daniel Grabauskas, Registry of Motor Vehicles
"I think it's extremely dangerous. This is putting children in danger."

But Grabauskas knows local law enforcement can't be everywhere.

Hank
"So clearly people are getting away with this?"

Daniel Grabauskas
"We clearly know that there are people passing school buses when it's illegal to do so we do our best to get as many as we can and come down on them hard."

The problem is that although registry investigators track down every complaint, all they can do for a first offense is send the driver a warning."

If local police actually catch a driver like this, the first offense is a maximum $200 fine.

But though cops handed out more than 97,000 citations for running stoplights and signs last year, they gave only about 1,400 for running by school buses. Federal officials say someone has to crack down.

Hank
"Do you think drivers are afraid of getting caught?"

Jim Ryan
"The driver's mindset now is that they won't get caught, that's is why they do it."

In North Carolina, law enforcement actually put cameras on school buses to nail dangerous drivers. In state and state and state: if you get caught running the stop arm you can go to jail.

But parents say the best deterrent could be to just imagine it's your child getting ready to cross the street.

Carol Hathaway
"You can't forget it. You can't pass a school bus and assume there won't be a child there ever again, because at any instant it could be a dead child."

Beacon Hill does have the power to increase the penalties for running a school bus stop sign, but recent bills proposed to crack down never made it out of committee.

Parents can get a "Getting to School Safely Community Action kit" from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Web site.

For more information, you can also log on to the Registry of Motor Vehicles Web site.