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By Megan Henry

Ohio Capital Journal

The Ohio House unanimously passed a bipartisan bill lawmakers hope will make school buses safer.

Lawmakers passed Ohio House Bill 3 on Wednesday, also known as the Enact the School Bus Safety Act. Ohio state Reps. Cecil Thomas, D-Cincinnati, and Bernie Willis, R-Springfield, introduced the bill, which now goes to the Senate for consideration.

“This is one of those bills that I believe is going to be transformational for the way that our school districts think about school bus safety for our kids,” Willis said.

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The bill increases the penalties for illegally passing a stopped school bus with a fine that would range from $250 to $1,000. Repeated offenses could lead to a license suspension, a required safety course and a $2,000 fine. The current penalty for illegally passing a stopped school bus in Ohio is between $0-$500.

“We’re missing probably thousands and thousands of illegal passages that are happening because we are not utilizing things that could work,” Willis said.

In an effort to record people illegally passing a school bus, H.B. 3 authorizes the use of school bus camera requirements. Ohio’s law currently neither specifically authorizes nor prohibits the use of cameras on a school bus.

“(A school bus driver) can review the footage later, and in accordance with current law, they can put together the report that says this happened at this time,” Willis said.

The Ohio Department of Public Safety reported in 2021 more than 14,000 citations were issued over a four-year period for illegally passing school buses, Paul Imhoff, government relations director of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said during his testimony in April.

“These dangerous incidents are placing children’s lives at risk, and H.B. 3 would make positive steps forward to enhance school bus safety and mitigate these unnecessary and dangerous occurrences,” he said.

Thomas said the bill is about children’s safety.

“Thousands of students in Ohio ride school buses and too many are put at risk by drivers who illegally pass stopped buses,” he said.

The bill, however, does not require seat belts on buses.

Seat belts are optional on large school buses weighing more than 10,000 pounds and 63% of Ohio school districts have at least one bus that has a seatbelt, said Lacey Snoke, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

Only eight states require seat belts on school buses: New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, and Texas.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine assembled the Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group in 2023 after Aiden Clark, a Northwestern Local Schools elementary student, died in a school bus crash. The Working Group issued 17 recommendations last year, but requiring seat belts on buses was not one of them.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommends states mandate school buses to have over-the-should and lap seat belts for all passengers.

There were 976 fatal school-transportation-related traffic crashes from 2013 to 2022 and 1,082 people were killed in those crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ohio Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, introduced a similar bill in the Senate about school bus safety earlier this year. Senate Bill 62 would create a $300 civil penalty for drivers who pass a stopped school bus illegally. The bill has had three hearings so far.

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