TTC bus, cars drive right by stopped school bus in dash-cam video

By Amanda Ferguson and News Staff

A Toronto man is hoping video he submitted to CityNews will help bring attention to the rules of the road — especially when it comes to school buses and the safety of children.

Kevin Quinn says he drives along Corporate Drive near Consilium Place in Scarborough every day on his way to work and often sees drivers headed in the opposite direction, ignoring a stopped school bus with its lights flashing.

“I take that route every day to work and if it’s timed right, I always get stopped behind the school bus,” Quinn explained. “Usually about two times, three times a week there’s at least one car that will blow by going eastbound, right passed the flashing lights.”

With his dash cam rolling on Friday morning, Quinn said he was shocked to see a TTC bus also ignore the school bus on the other side of the street and keep driving.

“I rarely see professional drivers like TTC drivers do something like that. I don’t know if (the driver) was having a bad morning or just didn’t realize there was a school bus there,” he said.

Quinn sent the video to the TTC, and spokesman Brad Ross said an investigation is underway.

“Our expectation as a transit operator is that all of our operators — bus, streetcar, even those river non-revenue vehicles with the TTC — obey the Highway Traffic Act at all times,” he said. “There’s a higher bar set even for our own operators that they drive safely at all times.”

Quinn said his main concern is for the children getting off the school bus.

“Because there’s so many kids there, it’s such a dangerous thing to do,” he said. “It’s a wide street, but it still doesn’t take away from the fact that you still have to stop for the school bus.”

Const. Clint Stibbe with Toronto Traffic Services said these types of situations occur quite frequently and are largely due to driver error.

“Anywhere there is not a median dividing the two directions of traffic, traffic in both directions must come to a full and complete stop until such time as that stop sign has been pulled in and the lights have been shut off.”

Stibbe said that so far this year they have issued about 300 school-bus-related tickets.

“Luckily this did not result in the death or the injury of a child,”  he said. “It could very easily have occurred,”

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