A video circulated by Montgomery County police seems to have made a positive difference when it comes to drivers illegally passing stopped school buses on River Road in Bethesda.
Two weeks ago, police distributed the roughly one-minute video showing at least 12 drivers on southbound River Road illegally passing a stopped school bus on northbound River Road as it picked up students in front of The Kenwood apartment building.
Capt. David Falcinelli, the commander of the Bethesda-based 2nd District, said Tuesday that since the video came out, he’s noticed a dramatic reduction in the number of southbound drivers passing stopped school buses at the spot.
“I sat there for an hour and zero drivers passed the several buses there,” Falcinelli told Bethesda Beat. “That’s a far cry from what was happening.”
Several media outlets posted the video and Falcinelli said officers conducted enforcement at the spot, issuings several $570 citations to drivers who did not stop. Police also said the bus shown in the video did have a camera installed to catch the license plates of drivers who don’t stop for stopped buses.
Drivers caught by the camera received $125 citations in the mail.
Falcinelli said it’s possible many of the southbound drivers who didn’t stop for the bus on the other side of the four-lane road didn’t realize they were required to by state law.
“I am not quite sure if this was inattention or simply forgetting the rules of the road, but the bottom line was that drivers were putting our kids’ lives in jeopardy,” Falcinelli wrote in a public message distributed by the county’s Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center.
According to state law, drivers must always stop for a stopped school bus, unless a road has a median or some other type of physical barrier separating drivers headed in opposite directions.
As for the police operation to catch distracted drivers last week on River Road, Falcinelli said it’s too soon to tell whether it has influenced local drivers to reconsider using their handheld phones while driving.
The operation, at River and Goldsboro roads, received worldwide attention in part because a county police officer dressed up as a homeless man and held a sign alerting drivers to the enforcement.
At a Tuesday event on pedestrian safety in Bethesda, county police Capt. Tom Didone, who heads the department’s Traffic Division, said officers face an uphill climb when it comes to getting drivers to put down their phones.
“Unfortunately, what happened was it took 10 years before we got laws on the books that allow officers to do the enforcement,” Didone said. “In that 10-year period, people have grown very accustomed to cell phones. There’s even been studies to show that there are chemical changes in the brain when the cell phone rings. So doing this over time is the only way we’re going to be able to change things.”
Maryland’s law making texting while driving a primary offense went into effect in 2013. While texting while driving was against the law before, officers could only enforce it if a driver was violating another traffic law, such as breaking the speed limit.
