Analysis of School Bus Stop-Arm Violation Reporting and Enforcement in Minnesota: Lessons Learned and Opportunities for Process Improvements

Abstract

School bus stop-arm violations represent a direct and serious safety risk to children boarding and exiting school buses. Mitigating these dangerous events with preventative measures, education, and proactive enforcement requires a deep understanding of these events. The goal of this study is to better understand the school bus stop-arm violation reporting ecosystem and identify inefficiencies and potential improvements. Analysis and investigation reveals under-reporting, under-enforcing, and numerous communication and process efficiency issues. The workflow of processing a report and citation is found to have many barriers and inefficiencies across all stakeholder groups. Even in cases where both parties are invested in the effort, the process is hindered by cumbersome processes throughout the workflow. Therefore, it is essential to consider the entire workflow to avoid proposing a solution that fails to address the underlying issues. This work concludes that a centralized statewide online portal would best serve the needs of users. Such a system would allow all stakeholders to have access to the relevant data stored effectively and efficiently, streamline communication, simplify tasks such as filtering or determining jurisdiction, and standardize data statewide for research purposes. Until the recommended solution can be developed and implemented, a list of recommendations for near-term implementation are provided.