Last fall, three children died and another was injured while crossing a rural highway to board their school bus. Tuesday, lawmakers rolled out a series of bills aimed at preventing a repeat of that tragedy.
Bills that have been introduced or will be later this week would prohibit children from having to cross state highways like Ind. 25, where 6-year-old twins Xzavier and Mason Ingle and their sister Alivia Stahl, 9, died Oct. 30. Lawmakers are also seeking to raise the penalties for drivers who fail to stop for school bus stop arms and want to deploy cameras on those stop arms to capture the license plates of vehicles that do violate the stop-arm law.
“Our community has suffered great tragedy recently,” said Sen. Randy Head, R-Logansport, whose district includes the site of last fall’s accident. Head has filed Senate Bill 2, which would raise penalties for stop arm violations, among other things. “No family should ever experience a loss of this kind, and I am hopeful this legislation, if passed, would help prevent similar accidents from occurring by encouraging drivers to slow down, follow the rules of the road and keep the safety of our children in mind.”
