SPRING HILL, Tenn. (WKRN) — After a speeding car almost hit a Spring Hill boy while he was getting on the school bus, his mother is demanding city leaders do something about it.
“I’m standing there going, ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ until he hears me,” Lindsey Sparkman recalled.
Sparkman was sending her 8-year-old son off to school when a car blew through the bus stop sign.
“I don’t know how people don’t see the big, flashing, red sign and know that ‘Hey, you probably need to stop or slow down or pay attention or something,'” she said.
According to Sparkman, it’s become a problem on her street in Spring Hill. In fact, she said it’s the second time this has happened in two weeks.
“I just want people to wake up and pay attention,” Sparkman said. “There’s really no other blunt way to put it other than a child will die if this doesn’t stop.”
Officials said the law requires drivers from both directions to stop when a school bus has the stop sign out. The only exception is if there’s a concrete barrier between lanes.
“It doesn’t take very long for the children to get on the bus — probably less than a minute. It’s less than a minute of your time. It’s really not that big of a deal,” said Lt. Michael Foster with the Spring Hill Police Department (SHPD).
SHPD officers said they’re watching this crime closely, but they need the community’s help.
“We’re trying to be proactive about it, but we don’t have enough officers to follow every bus. We don’t have enough officers to sit at every school zone. We do the best we can, but we have a dedicated traffic enforcement unit, but it’s only four officers,” Foster said.
According to Sparkman, her next step is to go to the city government.
“Can we put in speedbumps? Can we put in the big yellow caution signs saying ‘School bus stop ahead?’ We dont have any of that on this road,” the mother said.
News 2 has contacted the Spring Hill mayor about this matter. Meanwhile, police said they’re in both marked and unmarked units, watching for drivers ignoring the stop signs.
As for the driver from the incident involving Sparkman’s son, they have yet to be caught.
