Every year, millions of drivers illegally pass stopped school buses, putting students at risk during their daily trip to and from school.
The latest national data shows just how widespread the problem remains. According to the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, drivers illegally passed stopped school buses an estimated 38.4 million times during the 2025 – 2026 school year. And in a recent survey released by the Governors Highway Safety Association, nearly half of parents reported that their child had experienced a close call near a school bus or in a school zone.
Addressing a problem of this scale takes a shared commitment to education, awareness, and accountability. That’s why initiatives like National School Bus Safety Week are so important. Every October, school districts, transportation teams, law enforcement, and safety advocates across the country come together to remind drivers of the rules of the road and encourage safer behavior around school buses.
At BusPatrol, it’s one of our favorite opportunities to connect with the communities we serve. Each year, we work closely with our district partners to organize classroom presentations, community events, local media outreach, and awareness campaigns that bring greater attention to school bus safety.
This year, we centered our efforts around one message: Safety Is Shared. It reflects a belief at the heart of our mission that we all have a role to play in keeping students safe. Here’s a look at how we brought that message to communities across the country during School Bus Safety Week 2026.
Bringing Local Communities Together to Raise Awareness
School Bus Safety Week gives our partners an opportunity to share their progress, recognize local safety efforts, and bring greater public attention to the dangers of illegal school bus passing. Throughout the week, we worked alongside superintendents, police departments, and community leaders to organize local press events focused on school bus safety.
These events are planned in close collaboration with our partners, with messaging and outreach tailored to the needs of each community. Whether a district is introducing a new safety program, sharing early results, or encouraging drivers to take greater responsibility, our team helps bring the right people together and share those stories with local residents.
In Chicopee, MA, we joined city and school leaders to celebrate the launch of the state’s first citywide automated school bus stop-arm safety program.
“Our partnership with BusPatrol is real, it’s implemented and we are keeping our students safe,” said Mayor John Vieau. Reflecting on the program’s impact, he added, “We’re a safer city today because of BusPatrol.”
In Broward County, FL, local leaders came together to highlight the importance of community involvement in protecting students. Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn emphasized that responsibility extends well beyond the school district.
“It’s a shared responsibility by everybody to ensure that our students are safe going to and from school. That includes not just our parents, our staff, but every citizen on the road,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Peabody, MA, school and city leaders confirmed plans to install BusPatrol stop-arm cameras across the city’s entire school bus fleet. The event featured local parent and safety advocate Maria Scheri, who began speaking out about school bus safety after witnessing a driver illegally pass her son’s stopped school bus.
“I decided to speak up to protect our children because I felt that I just couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I was not going to wait for a tragedy to happen before something got done,” she said.
Maria’s experience is a powerful reminder of why community awareness matters. When parents, school leaders, and local officials have opportunities to share their experiences and concerns, they can help more people understand the risks students face and the steps being taken to protect them.
Partnering With Safety Leaders to Encourage Safer Driving Habits
Making the journey to and from school safer is a shared effort, and we’re proud to work alongside the organizations and advocates helping move that work forward. By bringing together leaders with different perspectives and expertise, we can help raise awareness, reach more drivers, and build greater support for school bus safety.
With that goal in mind, our CEO Karoon Monfared sat down with Ragina Ali, Public and Government Affairs Manager at AAA Club Alliance, to discuss the importance of collaboration in protecting students on the road.
Ragina brings decades of experience in law enforcement and traffic safety advocacy, including 12 years with the Baltimore Police Department and more than 20 years with AAA. Throughout her career, she’s worked with law enforcement, legislators, and community partners to advance traffic safety measures addressing distracted driving, teen driver safety and other roadway risks.
Together, Karoon and Ragina explored how education, awareness and accountability can help encourage safer driving habits around school buses, and the role that schools, families, law enforcement and safety advocates play in making that possible.
We’re grateful for opportunities to collaborate with organizations like AAA, whose experience and reach help bring greater attention to school bus safety and reinforce the work our partners are doing in communities across the country.
Teaching the Next Generation About School Bus Safety
Throughout School Bus Safety Week, our team joined school district partners in classrooms across the country to help students build safer habits around school buses. Through interactive presentations and assemblies, students learned how to board and exit safely, stay alert around traffic, and make smart decisions when crossing the street.
From Maryland and Virginia to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York and Texas, our team worked alongside local school districts to bring safety education to students and families. Activities ranged from classroom presentations and school assemblies to community events that brought students, educators and transportation teams together.
Each event was an opportunity to work directly with local educators and transportation teams to make safety education relevant to their students. By bringing these lessons into schools, we hope to help students develop habits they can carry with them throughout the school year and share with their families at home.
Raising Awareness On and Offline
School Bus Safety Week also gave us an opportunity to find creative ways to reach more people with important safety messages, both online and in the communities we serve.
On social media, we launched the Safety Is Shared pledge, inviting our team, partners, safety advocates, families and community members to make three simple commitments to safer roads.
By encouraging participants to share the pledge and invite others to join, we helped extend the message through personal and professional networks, reaching new audiences and encouraging more people to take an active role in school bus safety.
That same focus on reaching drivers carried into our local communities, where we worked with partners to bring safety reminders into everyday spaces.
In Virginia, we teamed up with Newport News Public Schools and the local police department to place yard signs along Jefferson Avenue reminding motorists to “Stop for the school bus, all directions.” The initiative targeted an area where the district reported more than 2,000 illegal passing violations during the previous school year.
From social media campaigns to signs along busy roads, these efforts show how school bus safety awareness can reach people in different ways. They’re also part of the ongoing support we provide our partners, working together to develop public service announcements, community education campaigns and targeted outreach that address local safety concerns.
By finding new ways to reach drivers and reinforce important safety messages, we help our partners keep school bus safety top of mind throughout the year.
Continuing Our Commitment
As we look back on School Bus Safety Week 2026, we’re grateful to the school districts, transportation teams, law enforcement officers, educators, local leaders, and safety advocates who helped bring this year’s activities to life.
We’re especially proud of the role our partners continue to play in that work. Their leadership, local knowledge, and commitment to student safety make initiatives like these possible, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to support them.
We look forward to building on the conversations, partnerships, and progress made this week as we continue working toward safer school bus journeys for every student. Interested in strengthening school bus safety in your community? Connect with BusPatrol to learn how we’re helping school districts across the country combine technology, education and community engagement to protect students.