SC kids could tattle on texting bus drivers

COLUMBIA --  Schoolchildren in South Carolina could be given a toll-free hot line to report their bus driver for using a cell phone behind the wheel.
The transportation chief for the S.C. Department of Education is urging lawmakers to put the department's no-cell-phone policy for bus drivers into a state law and expand it to include the loading and unloading zone. He also says stickers should be placed inside school buses with a phone number for children to call if they catch their driver violating it.
"Once in a while we will get a complaint that'll come in from some motorist or somebody that says they saw a bus driver on a cell phone," Donald Tudor, transportation director, said today.

"That could have been an emergency, but we have no way of knowing. But when that happens we follow up and we contact the district and the district talks to the driver."
He said an 800 number to allow students to enforce a new law could work the same way.
On Wednesday, Rep. Don Smith, R-North Augusta, will preside over a House subcommittee that will take up a bill, H. 4282, to make it a $100 misdemeanor for the public to operate a vehicle while talking or texting on a handheld cell phone. The bill exempts people who are reporting illegal activity or calling for help.
As for the toll-free number, Tudor pointed to North Carolina as the model for posting a number inside school buses.
Derek Graham, transportation chief for the North Carolina education department, said it's a pilot program involving a handful of districts, and it's intended for students to call to report a bus driver who is using a cell phone or not wearing a seat belt. It has been in effect for about a year-and-a-half and has yielded 60 calls, roughly half for seat belt violations and half for cell phones, he said.
"There's the occasional call, 'My bus driver is mean to me,' or somebody, a motorist who's gotten ahold of the number, (who says) 'There was a bus that was driving inappropriately or cut me off in traffic,'" said Graham.
But he said he has not heard any complaints from bus drivers who feel they are being unfairly targeted by mischievous children. The agency has not yet decided whether to expand the policy to other districts.