Last year, motorists across the United States illegally passed stopped school buses more than 39 million times, endangering the lives of scores of children who depend on buses, according to a national organization that represents state pupil transportation services.
Stop-arm running is such a prevalent yet understudied issue that the Child Safety Network – a national resource center that partners with states to prevent child injuries – has enlisted a New Mexico State University professor to lead a project to improve school bus safety by studying the visual attention failures that lead to illegal passes.
Michael Hout, a professor of psychology and kinesiology at NMSU with nearly 20 years of experience in cognitive psychology and visual attention, will investigate how the brain interprets complex visual environments and why individuals often overlook crucial information – insights directly relevant to distracted or careless driving.
Hout said the project aims to produce evidence-based recommendations for safer school bus designs and better evaluation of safety technologies.
"The central issue is that drivers frequently ignore or fail to notice school bus stop arms, resulting in children being struck by vehicles each year," said Hout, who serves as the associate dean of research for NMSU's College of Health, Education and Social Transformation. "Rather than assuming drivers intentionally break the law, our research team is asking whether the stop arms effectively capture drivers' visual attention and how bus safety systems can be designed to better account for human behavior."
The project will combine controlled laboratory experiments with real-world field studies.
Working with a group of postdoctoral and graduate researchers, Hout will use driving simulators and eye-tracking technology to measure how quickly different stop-arm designs attract drivers' attention. This part of the project will be conducted in a virtual reality/augmented reality lab that Hout established on NMSU's Las Cruces campus.
The researchers will also partner with area schools to install cameras on school buses to measure both how many drivers stop and how many illegally pass stopped buses. They will also evaluate factors such as bus signage, advertising on buses and other design features that may influence driver attention.
Hout said current data collection methods insufficiently evaluate school bus safety interventions. He explained that existing reporting often only counts violations and relies on bus drivers to record incidents while driving. He said meaningful evaluation requires knowing the percentage of drivers who stop versus those who do not, allowing comparisons across locations with different traffic volumes.
Hout has served as an adviser to the Child Safety Network since 2014. In a statement announcing the project, the center praised Hout for his comprehensive expertise in vision science, his prior collaborations with federal organizations and previous work at the National Science Foundation.
"This research initiative will finally answer why tens of millions of motorists have illegally and dangerously passed school buses while students are present," said Ward Leber, founder and chairman of the Child Safety Network. "The results will guide public policy, driver-education initiatives and support technological advancements for the nation's largest form of mass transportation – the school bus system."
Leber added, "Approximately 500,000 school buses transport 26 million students to and from school each day during an average 180-day school year. That represents roughly 9 billion student boardings and exits annually, which could put our students in the crosshairs of stop-arm violators unless we reduce this threat through the expertise of Dr. Hout, his graduate students and his personal passion for turning science into a life-saving endeavor."
The full article can be seen at https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-professor-leads-nationwide-initiative-to-improve-school-bus-safety/s/5819efca-7f85-4264-9b08-34b1152cebe0
