Fort St. John is known as a city that has a close knit community and friendly peers. However, recently the drivers of Fort St. John have been having troubles with regards to understanding and obeying simple road safety rules and guidelines.
Bus drivers like Cindy Dettling is a bus driver for school district 60 and has been driving students to school for many years. And her number one priority is to transport these students from point A to B safely. However, with the amount of careless drivers on the roads she is finding her job and her responsibility rather difficult.
What the drivers do not seem to understand is that when the school bus flashes a yellow light that it means that you must slow down. And if you see a flashing red light that you must come to a complete stop until the red light is no longer flashing.
With such simple instructions and guidelines, it’s hard to understand why these drivers decide to ignore these rules.
Also passing a school bus with a flashing red light can result in a really big fine from the RCMP.
In addition, it is also putting young people’s lives in danger.
And young kids are also easily distracted and do not pay attention a lot of the time. Especially, when they are around their friends. This is why bus drivers like Cindy Dettling are concerned when a driver do not obey road safety rules.
Bus drivers can report the license plate number to the RCMP; however often it is difficult to capture the license plate numbers.
This is why Cindy Dettling has decided to put together an awareness campaign called Safe Stop. Local businesses have been open to this campaign and have been promoting it. She has also created a web page that talks about the Safe Stop campaign and explains what it is all about.
The city of Fort St. John has also decided to take part of Safe Stop Education Day. Where buses and drivers will be parked at local stores with their red lights flashing promoting and educating what Safe Stop is all about.
More than 2,200 students use school buses to get safely to and from school everyday. And the city of Fort St. John, School District 60 and the bus driver’s number one priority is the safety of these children.
