The Ohio House unanimously advanced the bipartisan School Bus Safety Act on Wednesday, which has gone through many revisions in the almost two years since the bus crash that fatally ejected an 11-year-old and seriously injured more than 20 others.
Introduced by Reps. Bernie Willis (R-Springfield) and Cecil Thomas (D-Cincinnati), House Bill 3 boosts the penalties for illegally passing any school bus that is loading or unloading passengers by mandating fines and increasing the points a person could get on their driver’s license or the length of time they could have their license revoked.
The bill authorizes the installation of cameras on school buses, but only to be used as additional evidence in violation cases. And it establishes the School Bus Safety Fund and Grant Program, with an initial appropriation of $10 million from Ohio Lottery funds, so that districts could retrofit their fleet with safety features.
“There are many local school districts that want to add seatbelts and have the money to do it, and some have the money to do it and they don’t want to add seatbelts for whatever reason,” House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said.
The money could also be used for crossing arms, illuminated signs, collision avoidance systems, ground wash lights and more, according to HB 3.
Willis lives two miles away from the site of the Lawrenceville accident that killed Aiden Clark, so the yearslong push is personal.
“This is one of those bills that I believe is going to be transformational for the way that our school districts think about school bus safety for our kids,” he said.
In January 2024, a statewide task force Gov. Mike DeWine assembled released its guidance to bolster safety among the state’s fleet of school buses—many of them amended into an earlier version of HB 3. The task force took form in August 2023, immediately after the crash.
Mandating seatbelt restraints on all buses was not one of the 17 recommendations made by the 15-member committee. Instead, it recommended the state-funded needs-based grants. Although DeWine said then he was looking to draw on existing sources of money to fund that, he said it would likely need to go through the legislature. The task force also recommended more training for school bus drivers.
HB 3 now heads to the Senate.
