Is your morning coffee worth a child's life?

What's big, noisy and yellow but invisible to many? If you guessed a school bus, well done. You've passed the first lesson of the new school year. That too many drivers in Peterborough city and county make a game of playing chicken with school buses remains a sad but true fact of roadway life. How many? One is way too many. Despite the best efforts of government and law enforcement to come down hard on offenders -- a $400 to $2,000 fine and six demerit points for a first offence -- the desire to be first in the morning coffee shop drive-thru line is too overwhelming for the reckless. Each school year, we hear from countless bus drivers literally scared for their young charges' lives. That a child isn't struck and injured daily, or worse, is a stroke of luck, nothing else. It's simple -- motorists traveling in BOTH directions must stop when approaching a stopped school bus with its upper red lights flashing. Kids are kids. They're adventurous, rambunctious and reckless all at one. We have to be their eyes and ears. The first few weeks of school will see the cops enforce school bus safety laws diligently but there will be a drop-off in that enforcement. Keep a pen and paper pad in the car -- it'll come in handy the next time that idiot in front of you decides that double-double is worth more than a child's life.