When your kids return to school next week, a revision to a Georgia law regarding bus stop-arm requirements for motorists will have been put into place.
As Cobb students were letting out for their winter break this week, Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday signed SB 25, which clarifies language for when drivers must stop for buses on divided roadways.
The law passed by the General Assembly last year contained vague language about when motorists traveling in the opposite direction from a bus with the stop-arm extended had to stop.
The revision mandates that those vehicles must now stop on divided roads or highways unless there is a physical barrier between the two directions of traffic.
Along a road that is divided by a center turn lane or double yellow lane stripes, vehicles heading in the other direction must stop. The law passed in 2018 made that unclear.
However, if a road is divided by a grass or unpaved median or a raised barrier, vehicles traveling in the opposite direction do not have to stop.
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All traffic on two-lane roads must stop for stopped buses, as has been the case since before last year’s legislation.
School Transportation News said two students in Georgia have been hit since the law was passed last year, one of them fatally, by vehicles that ran bus stop-arm signs.
SB 25 passed unanimously last week, 171-0 by the House and 55-0 by the Senate. It was the first bill signed into law by Kemp since he became governor in January, and it went into effect immediately.
State public safety agencies, including the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, released the following graphic to illustrate changes in the law.
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That seems dumb.