Passing A School Bus

The duty is wider than most drivers assume in one direction and narrower in another, and the two halves are usually remembered the wrong way round. On a roadway with fewer than four lanes, traffic in both directions stops, at least ten feet from the front or rear of a school bus that is stopped to receive or discharge children.

• §ORC 4511.75

The exception is about the road, not about the bus. Where a highway has been divided into four or more traffic lanes, a driver need not stop for a school bus that is approaching from the opposite direction and has stopped to receive or discharge children. Four lanes is the count that matters, and it is the one drivers most often get wrong on a wide two lane road.

• §ORC 4511.75

The reported penalty on a first conviction is a fine of up to five hundred dollars, with the court also able to impose a class seven driver's licence suspension, and points assessed by the registrar. It sits well above an ordinary moving violation, which is the point of it.

• §ORC 4511.75
• §ORC 4510.036

The exact penalty provisions, how a subsequent conviction is treated, the rules for a bus stopped on private property or in a school zone, and the position of a driver who did not see the bus are in the section and in the penalty sections, and are not fully reproduced here. Municipalities may have their own ordinances on the same conduct. A citation based on a report from a bus camera or a driver rather than an officer's own observation raises its own questions, and a licensed Ohio attorney is who raises them.

• §ORC 4511.75