SOUTH JORDAN — Katie Hall squeezed her 5-year-old son and kissed him on the forehead before sending him on the school bus to kindergarten for the first time this year.

“He actually grabbed ahold of my leg, and I was trying not to cry,” Hall said.

She said she felt terrified. “He’s only 5 and so I was really, really nervous about it!”

But Hall said her son, Zakary, was so excited to ride the bus like his older siblings and to attend the “big school,” as he calls it.

Zakary’s bus driver, Victor Anderson, said he does everything he can to ensure his student’s safety.

“I take it very seriously,” he said.

But Anderson said he also relies on drivers to do their part, like stopping for flashing yellow or red lights when kids are loading on or off the bus.

“Stop! Let us do our job and get the kids off the bus, across the street safely,” he explained.

Anderson said students are in the most danger of a driver hitting them while getting on or off the bus. He encourages students to stay 10 feet away from the bus and begs drivers to watch for kids who come running from all directions.

Hall admitted her son is so little and often forgets to look both ways.

Utah Department of Transportation spokesman John Gleason said, “It’s our job as drivers to watch out for all of that. Expect the unexpected.”

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Anderson has already seen people drive past his bus with the stop arm extended this school year.

“I literally had to hit my horn, and they didn’t stop and just kept on going, but I had kids in the crosswalk,” Anderson said.

He said drivers should prepare to stop even when approaching the bus from the opposite direction. It's illegal to pass a bus from either side, unless you're on a divided highway. Drivers should also stop their vehicles no closer than 10 to 20 feet from the school bus.

Last May, Utah bus drivers across the state tracked stop arm violations. According to Sula Bearden, dispatch coordinator for the transportation department of the Jordan School District, bus drivers reported 1,012 cars who illegally blew past their stop sign while unloading kids in just one day.

“But they’ve got to be more safe than what they are right now,” Anderson pleaded.

Gleason encourages drivers to remove all distractions such as, “eating or playing with the radio station, putting on makeup, any of those things that take our focus off of what we need to be focusing on and that’s driving,” he said.

Gleason said everyone has a shared responsibility to keep kids like little Zakary and all his kindergarten buddies safe.

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