A child was slightly injured Monday morning when a sedan struck them while they were crossing NE Allworth Road near Battle Ground to reach a stopped school bus. The driver slowed but did not stop in time, clipping the child with the front passenger-side corner of the car before the child fell to the ground.
According to the Clark County Sheriff's Office, deputies responded at about 8:51 a.m. near the 19300 block of NE Allworth Road. A school bus had stopped there to pick up an elementary school student when the collision occurred. Investigators said a sedan traveling in the opposite direction slowed but did not stop as the child began crossing.
Driver Ticketed After Stopping Immediately
The driver stopped right away and cooperated with investigators, who later issued a ticket for passing a stopped school bus. Accounts of the penalty for that violation differ: the same report describing the crash says failing to stop for a school bus can result in a fine of more than $400, while the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction states that motorists who fail to stop when required face a $500 fine.
The Clark County Sheriff's Office reminded drivers to stop for school buses whenever the law requires it. Under Washington rules outlined by OSPI, drivers traveling in both directions on a two-lane road must come to a stop when a bus has its flashing red lights or extended stop sign in operation.
A Statewide School-Bus Safety Concern
Monday's crash fits into a pattern state officials have been tracking for years. A one-day survey conducted by NASDPTS in 2025 found that Washington school bus drivers documented 1,156 instances of motorists illegally passing a stopped bus; OSPI reported the results. Officials used the count to estimate that drivers are illegally passing stopped school buses more than 200,000 times annually across the state.
A separate one-day count in 2026 recorded 960 illegal passes of stopped school buses in Washington, according to the Columbia Basin Herald. That survey drew responses from 3,419 Washington bus drivers and more than 101,000 drivers nationwide; the outlet noted that if the single-day rate held across a typical 180-day school year, it would total more than 172,000 violations statewide.
OSPI also reported that Washington logged 271 collisions involving school buses in 2024, with the majority of those crashes attributed to other drivers rather than bus operators. The National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services has tracked the broader issue since 2010, when it launched the first national survey on illegal school-bus passing; the survey went unconducted in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
