School bus drivers frustrated that illegal passing is still a problem on P.E.I.

Jason MacKinnon is seeing a lot of drivers passing school buses these days when he's picking up and dropping off his contingent of students.

He's also hearing similar concerns from other bus drivers across P.E.I., in his capacity as president of CUPE 1145, the union that represents the bus drivers.

"I see a lot of people — when they see those amber lights flashing, they want to treat it like a traffic light and fly through it," he said. "I feel saddened that people actually would try to take the child's life this way."

This kind of bad behaviour is happening across the Island, MacKinnon said, but the issue seems to be getting worse in rural P.E.I.

He doesn't know why. He just knows that the measures tried over the years to tackle the issue have not worked.

Charges rarely laid

Some of those measures include signs and ad campaigns every fall to remind drivers that other vehicles have to stop when buses are stopped with their sign out and red flights flashing.

The Public Schools Branch told CBC News in an email that bus drivers have reported 111 illegal-passing incidents to the branch so far this year. Last year, there were 163 in total.

It appears such reports rarely lead to charges, though. Only 14 drivers were charged with this kind of offence in RCMP territory on the Island in 2022. (That doesn't include the jurisdictions of Charlottetown, Summerside and Kensington, which have their own police forces.)

Before a charge is laid, P.E.I. RCMP media relations officer Const. Gavin Moore said, police need to gather information including a description of the driver and the vehicle, the licence plate number, and witnesses' accounts of what happened.

"Certainly, we can only work with the information we have in an investigation," he said. "If we don't have the information, the charge can't be laid."

MacKinnon said bus drivers try to provide the police with as many details as possible, but it's hard for them to capture information about a vehicle zipping by.

The bus driver's priority has to be watching out for the children first, ready to hold them back or call their names if they are coming off the bus as a vehicle speeds by, he said.

"We're at a disadvantage when it comes to [sticking] your head out the window. At that same time, we're also making sure that the children are safe. That's our biggest mandate," he said.

After the drivers have filed incident reports to the Public Schools Branch, they don't know much about what happens to the information, MacKinnon said.

"We're not getting follow-ups and that's the biggest frustration," he said. "We're just hoping to get some collaboration and co-operation to make sure that the process is being followed."

Looking for solutions

MacKinnon is part of a task force formed last year with police, school and transportation representation. The group's now researching what more could be done to address this problem.

He'd like to see the province equip all buses with high-quality recording equipment like dashboard cameras, which he's noticed are available on P.E.I.'s growing fleet of new electric schoolbuses.

A decade ago, the Public Schools Branch installed cameras on some buses in the hope they could capture licence plate numbers and drivers' identities. But the cameras didn't work particularly well.

"It was a pilot project. It just kind of faded away," MacKinnon said.

More recently, the PE.I. government increased the penalty for illegal bus passing, bringing in an automatic three-month licence suspension upon conviction. That's on top of a $1,000 fine for a first offence. Repeat offenders could pay up to $5,000.

MacKinnon would like to see the penalty for a first offence go up to the middle of that range, about $2,500.

In the meantime, he is pleading with Island drivers to pay attention on the road and keep kids safe.

"You have to be vigilant. You have to do your job. When we're on the roads, the safety is paramount with the kids, and that has to be reciprocated… with the motorists on the road."