VIRGINIA
Heather Taylor, Loudoun County mother, monitors bus stop violations
A Loudoun County mother recently set out with a camera, a laptop editor and a plan—all to prove her children's bus stop is dangerous.
“I think it's an accident waiting to happen,” said the mother, Heather Taylor.
The Loudoun County mother of two is on a mission.
Last spring, Heather Taylor began recording her children's bus stop right on the edge of a four lane highway, Route 9, in Loudoun County. Then, she made a video.
Over the last year, Taylor caught one car after another zipping past the bus, even with its warning lights flashing.
“I was as shocked as anybody when I finally sat down and started compiling the video, how many have run the bus, how many of the same cars run it regularly,” Taylor said.
The intersection where the bus stops is not a divided highway, and the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office says the law is clear.
“All vehicles in all directions must stop,” said Sgt. Kevin Robinette of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Unit.
The Sheriff's Office says it has ramped up patrols in the area as much as possible—in a rural county with 834 buses.
“If we see it, we're going to write a ticket, generally for it,” Robinette said.
Taylor’s greatest fear, she says “is that one of those cars is going to be coming down the road texting, not paying attention, fiddling with the radio and they're going to look up just in time to see my child.”
Taylor posted her video on YouTube hoping to convince school officials to move the stop.
“You know it's a free country, free expression. We don't mind that, but we want to work for a solution,” said Wayde Byard, the Communications Director for Loudoun County Public Schools.
Byard says school officials, police and highway inspectors all deem the bus stop safe.
“You know we'd never want a child to be injured. We never have had a child injured in that way,” Byard said.
Byard says the district is trying to find an alternative bus stop.
Taylor vows to keep shooting video, until something changes.
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