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Warkworth Police will conduct high visibility patrols from October 24 to 27 in an effort to reduce speeding past stopped school buses.
The problem was highlighted by a number of Gubbs Motors’ bus drivers and company director Kevin Jones.
“The legal limit to drive past a stopped school bus is 20kmph, and we see a number of drivers doing between 80 and 100kmph,” Kevin says.
“We’ve had an incident where two drivers have tried to overtake at the same time and it’s getting out of hand.”
Matakana Road, Omaha Flats Road and SH1 are proving to be the most problematic areas.
Kevin says there are long straights on these roads so people think they have good visibility to overtake, but drivers need to think about children stepping out from in front of a bus, which they might not see until the very last minute.
So far, no accidents have occurred locally, but nationally children have been killed.
“It’s a nationwide problem that was brought up a lot at a recent New Zealand Bus and Coach conference,” Kevin says.
To help solve the problem, Gubbs Motors will be installing dash cams in their buses to record any offences and these will be reported to police.
“We used to have signs in the back windows of the buses telling people to slow down, but we had to remove them as they aren’t officially approved.”
