ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, October 7, 1996                TAG: 9610070006
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER STAFF WRITER

STROBE LIGHTS ARE MAKING BEDFORD'S BUSES SAFER

People are noticing stopped buses that use rooftop strobe lights.

Tom Paramore, transportation director, said many favorable comments have come from bus drivers, who want the new lights on their own, older buses.

The lights generated so many positive comments in Appomattox County that almost all of the county's 45 buses were refitted with them.

Botetourt County has been using strobe lights for a couple of years and is planning to add them to more buses. The strobes are on 12 buses that serve routes in Eagle Rock, Buchanan and Fincastle - areas where there is usually early morning fog, said Mike Scott, Botetourt's transportation shop foreman.

Paramore ordered the lights on the new buses after a bus driver asked about them.

"We are looking for any edge we can to make" the buses safer, said Paramore about the lights. "They give you so much visibility."

He said the Bedford bus involved in a fatal accident a few weeks ago did not have the strobe lights. In that accident, a student was killed when the car she was in slid under a stopped school bus.

Virginia school systems started using rooftop strobe lights in March 1992 after the General Assembly passed emergency legislation allowing the lights, said Capt. W.S. Flaherty, safety officer for the State Police.

Flaherty said the Montgomery County School system first requested the lights. They're particularly useful on Christiansburg Mountain, where buses make frequent stops and share the road with tractor trailers.

The strobe lights work, Flaherty said. He said he's been on roads where "you see the light long before you see the bus."

Matt Lair, director of transportation for Appomattox schools, said he's heard nothing but positive comments on the lights. Now, when it's raining and a bus driver doesn't use the lights, other drivers report him.

The state Department of Education doesn't have figures on the number of school systems using strobe lights, but several officials said many buses need them in the early morning. The officials said Virginia doesn't allow them to be used at night except in bad weather.

Some officials, he said, are concerned that "the more frequently you run them, the less attention you draw" to stopped buses.

Also, Flaherty said the lights are so effective that some fear motorists will look only at the strobes and not see other warning signals.

"School buses are the safest mode of transportation on the highway. They are mechanically sound, and so much effort and monitoring" goes into making them safe, Flaherty said.

LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Ed Bowden, shop foreman, stands in
          one of the new Bedford County school buses equipped with two 
          emergency exits and a strobe light on top. color.