SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — A Jordan School District bus driver is being praised for keeping more than a dozen children safe when another driver illegally passed the bus as children were trying to cross the street.
Joey Skelton was honored Friday as the district hopes to bring more awareness to the number of stop arm violations happening across Utah.
"How dare a driver do that and put my child or any of these children in danger?" asked parent Stacy Allen.
Not only is Allen the mother of a 10-year-old child, she also works Zero Fatalities, a group that looks to put an end to vehicular deaths on state roadways.
"We have laws and we have rules to keep all road users safe," she said.
Back in December, Allen's child, along with others, were getting off the bus in an area of South Jordan when the near-catastrophe occurred.
"I happened to look in my rear view mirror and noticed that a vehicle was traveling rather fast and was not slowing down," detailed Carrie Minnesota, who was at the bus stop waiting to pick up her grandchild, "and as I realized that he was not going to stop, I threw my car door open, jumped out and started waving my arms and yelling."
At the same time Skelton did what he could to keep the children safe even after putting on the warning lights and stop signs on the bus.
"I did lay on my air horn and that got the kids attention, if they weren't paying attention and that definitely got their attention, that something was going wrong," he said.
The other driver sped passed the stop-arms.
"It could have been catastrophic if the kids weren't waiting for me to tell them it was safe," Skelton said.
The bus driver has since been hailed as a hero, and on Friday he received a sign and gifts from the very children he helped keep safe. It was also a time to bring awareness to just how often cars are seen illegally passing school buses on Utah roads.
According to the Director of Transportation for the district, it's estimated that more than 10 million drivers nationally illegally pass school buses every year. Closer to home in Utah, more than 100,000 stop arm violations are reported involving drivers and school buses.
"I'm notified directly from the Director of Transportation when we have the violations, they send me usually video of the incident and then we conduct follow up investigations on it and track people down that choose to violate these laws," explained Sgt. Kendall Holt with the West Jordan Police Department.
Holt said stop-arm violations come with a penalty.
"We've got a great support right now up on the hill with our state legislators," he said, "they're trying to always be proactive with these laws and right now we have stop-arm violation laws that usually carry a fairly hefty fine."
For parents, and bus drivers like Skelton who are tasked with getting children to school and back safely, they hope drivers will be more cautious and aware when stop-arms are out.
"We just need to take on that responsibility as drivers to not drive distracted," said Minnesota, "that we need to keep our children safe."
