If your student’s bus is involved in a traffic accident the safety and the
well-being of students are always our first priority. The Police Department, the Fire Department and School Administrators are immediately notified.

Accident Scene Protocol

• Transportation Department Director/or Representative meets with Police Department Officer /Fire Department Supervisor.
• Transportation Department Director/or Representative meets with Bus Driver.
• McHenry School District 15 Director of Health Services - or School Nurse meets with Police Department Officer / Fire Department Supervisor.
• The Fire Department paramedics / Director of Health Services or School Nurse boards the school bus and evaluates each student on bus.
• The students are safely transported back to school on the bus.
• The School Administrators and staff meet the students at the school. All students are evaluated by the school district nursing staff.
• After each student is evaluated again by a nurse, his or her parents are then called and notified of the accident.
• Parents at the accident scene are informed that all students will be transported to or back to school and told all students will be evaluated by the school district nursing staff before they are released.
• If a parent comes to school to pick-up their student, the parent must sign out their student at time of release.
• Student will be transported home on a school bus in the PM if the School Administrator is given permission to do so by his or her parents.

Reminders for Motorists

Parents and community members can support bus drivers by being good safety examples to their children and by being courteous to bus drivers. Here are a few reminders:

• It is against the law to pass from either direction on two-lane roads a stopped school bus with flashing red lights and the stop arm extended. Traffic on four-lane roads going in the opposite direction does not have to stop.
• In Illinois Rules of the Road on Page 30 & 31 it states:
  Your driving privileges will be suspended for three months if you are convicted of illegally passing a stopped school bus. If you receive two such convictions within five years, your driving privileges will be suspended for one year. In addition to suspensions, violators will be fined $150 for a first conviction and $500 for a second or subsequent conviction.
• A school bus must stop at all railroad crossings with or without children by using emergency lights.
• School buses make frequent stops and wide turns.