The Utah State Board of Education, Law and Policy Committee, meeting in Salt Lake City, proposed this past week to enact a policy that would prohibit school bus drivers from using cell phones while on the job. According to Deseret News, the policy would require school districts in Utah to set guidelines for cell phones and other electronic devices.
According to Rhonda Rose, the state PTA community involvement commissioner, state PTA officials have been receiving e-mails and phone calls from concerned parents ever since the California train wreck where an engineer, distracted by sending and receiving text messages, missed a signal and ran into a freight train. Rose reported that school bus drivers in Utah currently have no restrictions on cell phone or texting use. For now, the Utah State Board of Education will issue a memo asking district officials to immediately look at the issue of bus drivers using cell phones while driving. Some of the committee members felt that this matter should be deferred to the legislature to enact a law governing the use of cell phones/ text messaging by bus drivers while on the job.
My take: given the proven distraction that cell phones are among drivers, it is a no-brainer that these devices need to be prohibited by bus drivers while they are driving. I am not sure why anyone needs to wait until there is a law disallowing this. Surely the State Board doesn’t want to wait until there is a situation where people are injured because a bus driver was distracted by his phone. To prevent future injuries and to reduce liability for the state, there needs to be an executive decision now banning cell phone use by bus drivers while on the job. This kind of decision is in the best interests of children who ride these busses as well as other motorist that they share the road with.
This article was written by Ron Kramer, a personal injury lawyer/attorney who represents victims of accident and car wreck cases who have been injured because of the negligence of cell phone-using motorists.
Published by: Ron Kramer
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