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Governor should sign bill

West Virginia legislators left Charleston last week without accomplishing much of what they hoped when they began their annual 60-day session in January.

But one thing they did get done may well save children’s lives.

It is Senate Bill 13, finalized by the Legislature on March 12. It was sent to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for his signature.

He can be pardoned for not addressing the stack of bills on his desk. He was preoccupied with budget matters last week. But now that legislators have gone home, Tomblin ought to find SB 13 and make it the very first measure he signs into law.

What is SB 13? It’s a bill increasing penalties for passing stopped school buses. Obviously, we need that badly in West Virginia.

School bus drivers report that by the hundreds, perhaps thousands each year, motorists pass the big yellow vehicles while they are stopped on highways to let children board or to disembark them.

Incredibly, some offenders insist they just didn’t see the buses, which have multiple flashing red lights and red stop signs. And some claim they just didn’t know they were supposed to stop.

Baloney. Anyone that stupid or that preoccupied while driving should lose his or her driver’s license immediately. Putting children at risk because you don’t feel like paying attention while behind the wheel or because you think their safety isn’t as important as saving you a few seconds isn’t acceptable.

Drivers who don’t stop for school buses injure and sometimes, kill children. Just last week in Logan County, W.Va., a 12-year-old child was walking toward a stopped school bus when the youngster was hit by a car. Police say it was driven by a 23-year-old woman who apparently just decided to drive past the bus. Fortunately, the child suffered only minor injuries.

Let’s hope the driver is punished as harshly as possible under existing law.

But if SB 13 is signed into law, the penalties will be increased. Under the bill, the first offense of passing a stopped school bus can cost the offender $500 in fines -and as much as six months in jail. A second offense carries the same potential jail time, plus a fine of up to $1,000. A third offense carries a mandatory $1,000 fine and no less than 48 hours in jail (up to six months).

While any community in which someone convicted of passing stopped buses twice would allow the offender the opportunity for a third one is beyond me, by the way.

In addition, a first offense carries a 30-day suspension of the offender’s driver’s license. Suspensions go up to six months for a third offense.

Another important facet of the bill would solve a dilemma faced by police who can identify vehicles that pass buses, but not their drivers. SB 13 stipulates that in such situations, the vehicles’ owners are held responsible (though they can only be fined, not jailed).

Clearly, to judge by the number of times stopped school buses are passed, we need SB 13.

Just as obviously, the law of averages dictates that if we don’t crack down on the jerks who pass buses, one of them is going to kill a child – perhaps several – eventually.

Seldom are governors given the opportunity to save children’s lives. Gov. Tomblin can do that.

Sign the bill, governor.

Mike Myer is the executive editor at the Wheeling Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register. Myer can be reached at mmyer@theintelligencer.net.

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