Slow down; a child's life depends on it

Every school morning and afternoon, hundreds of thousands of children step off curbs and wait at bus stops across Texas. For the children, those few seconds are the most dangerous part of their school day.

For Aledo students those times will be even more dangerous, with construction requiring detours through neighborhoods.

When kids die in school-transportation-related crashes, they're more likely to die as pedestrians — struck while boarding, exiting, or crossing near a bus — than as passengers on the bus itself. Riding inside a school bus is one of the safest ways for a child to travel. It's the walk to the stop, the wait at the curb, and the dash across the street that puts them at risk.

Texas knows this problem better than most states. Over the past decade, Texas has recorded more fatal school bus crashes than anywhere else in the country. With more than a thousand school bus crashes a year and 1.4 million students riding buses daily, the margin for driver error is thin.

What makes this frustrating is that these tragedies are almost entirely preventable. Children are hit far more often by passing motorists — someone illegally passing a stopped bus, someone distracted near a stop — than by the bus itself. Young kids, especially ages 5 to 10, are hit hardest. They're small, impulsive, and often can't see over a car's hood, even when the driver can't see them either.

So here's a simple ask of every driver:

Stop for flashing lights and the extended stop arm — every time. It's illegal to pass a stopped school bus in Texas, whether you're behind it, meeting it, or at an intersection. Kids cross in front of and behind buses without looking. No errand is worth that risk.

Slow down near schools and residential streets, especially 7-8 a.m. and 3-4 p.m., when pedestrian crashes involving kids spike.

Put the phone down. A child stepping off a curb won't wait for you to finish a text.

Watch for kids where you don't expect them — between parked cars, behind hedges, in a bus's blind spot.

Expect the unexpected. Young children don't yet understand traffic or speed the way adults do. Drivers have to account for that unpredictability, because kids can't.

None of this requires new laws or technology — just drivers doing what they already know: slow down, pay attention, and treat a stopped bus and kids on the sidewalk as a full stop, not a suggestion.

Every year, families bury children who were simply trying to get to school — deaths that were almost always preventable. That's not a lot to ask of yourself.

Slow down. Stop for the bus. Watch for the kids. Every single time.