Northern Ontario advocate welcomes new amber lights on school buses

A northern Ontario school bus safety advocate welcomes new legislation that will require school buses to install a new eight-lamp amber-red warning lights.

When classes resume in September, all Ontario school buses will be outfitted with flashing amber lights that warn drivers they are about to stop to pick up a student. Once the bus has come to a full stop, a different set of red lights flash, and a stop sign extends out from the driver's side.

"We feel that it's going to cut down on confusion and make it a lot easier for the general public and the driving public to understand what that school bus is doing," said Pierre Ranger, chair of the Let's Remember Adam campaign.

Ranger's five-year-old brother Adam was killed 22 years ago when he was hit by a truck while getting off a school bus in North Bay, Ont.

He has advocated for amber warning lights for years, and said the province was set to make them mandatory in 2013. But that never happened.

On July 1, Ontario became Canada's last province to legislate the change.

"Our government is making school buses safer for children to prevent tragedy and protect students while on the road," said Ontario Minister of Education Stephen Lecce in an email statement to CBC. 

"To be completed in the fall, we have invested in ensuring Ontario's existing school bus fleet are retrofitted with modern lighting and decals that are designed to slow down traffic while children enter or exit a school bus."

Ranger said he would also like to see more bus operators in the province use stop-arm cameras, which record a 360-degree image around a bus and will capture the licence plates of any cars that make an illegal pass.

Those drivers are then automatically ticketed.

Ranger said his hometown of Mattawa, Ont., has added the cameras to school buses, but it's up to municipalities and their respective school bus consortiums to make the change.

Renée Boucher, executive director of the Sudbury Student Services Consortium, which manages school buses for the Sudbury area's four school boards, said operators will have the summer to install the new lighting system.

"Any school bus manufactured after 2005, they will need to have this new lighting system," she said.

The July 1 start date provides time for operators to make the changes before the next school year.

"Just to give the summer months, give the operators sufficient time to install the new lights," Boucher said.

"Some buses it's an easy process; it's just like a light bulb that they need to change, but in some other buses, depending on the make, the whole top of the bus needs to be replaced."

Boucher said drivers who pass a school bus that has stopped to pick up, or drop off, students can be charged between $400 and $2,000 on a first offence, and get six demerit points.

"If they break the rule a second time, within five years, there is a penalty of $1,000 to $4,000 and another six demerit points," she said.

In addition to the new amber lights, the consortium is also piloting the use of seatbelts on three of its buses. It's a project funded through Transport Canada.

Three buses also had seatbelts the previous school year, but Boucher said the program was extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"We're hoping that in this particular school year starting, we're going to have an increase of children and we'll be able to test the seatbelts as they are supposed to be worn," she said.