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Kokua Line
June Watanabe
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Adjacent lane needs to stop for school bus
Question: I live in Salt Lake and encounter school buses in the morning while taking my daughter and her friend to school. What are the rules for stopping when school buses are loading children? Ala Napunani Street has four lanes. Does traffic flowing in the opposite direction from where the school bus is stopped need to stop, too? One morning, I was attempting to make a left turn from Ala Ilima onto Ala Napuaa, which is only two lanes wide, but stopped on Ala Ilima because a school bus was loading children on the Ala Napuaa corner with its stop sign deployed and red lights flashing. If I made the turn, the bus would be on my left, going in the opposite direction from my vehicle. I had my left-turn signal on, but the car behind me sounded the horn, drove around me and made an obscene gesture. Was I wrong to stop?
Answer: Not if you were turning onto a two-lane street.
You asked first about a four-lane street.
If the bus were stopped on Ala Napunani and unloading students, with its lights flashing and stop sign deployed, you did not have to stop if you were driving by in the opposite direction.
Under Hawaii Revised Statutes, Sec. 219C-95, you are required to stop for a stopped school bus with flashing lights if you are in the lane occupied by the bus, or in any lanes adjacent to it, regardless of what direction you are traveling.
Since you were turning onto two-lane Ala Napuaa Street, your car would have been in the adjacent lane to the unloading school bus, so you would have been required to stop, said Capt. Frank Fujii, of the Honolulu Police Department.
He further explained that if there is a shoulder along a roadway, and a school bus stops on the shoulder, leaving the right lane open, "that open lane becomes the adjacent lane."
There is also a minimum distance that drivers are supposed to have from a stopped school bus.
Under the law, drivers "shall stop" not less than 20 feet from the school bus and not proceed until the bus begins to move and all its visual signals are turned off.
Q: Is it legal to concrete the median between a property owner's boundary and the street? Can a homeowner make changes to the location and size of a driveway without a permit?
A: No, on both counts, said Art Challacombe, manager of customer services for the city Department of Planning and Permitting.
Paving in the sidewalk area would require a sidewalk encroachment variance, and work on the driveway would require a building code variance, neither of which are guaranteed approvals, he said.
Auwe
I saw someone almost get hit by a car at the mauka-Ewa corner of Ward Avenue and Kinau Street on Friday. The light had turned red on Kinau, but the car rolled through the crosswalk and continued through the intersection, turning left on Ward. The pedestrian pulled back in the nick of time. -- John Whitaker
Got a question or complaint? Call 529-4773, fax 529-4750, or write to Kokua Line, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu 96813. As many as possible will be answered. E-mail to
kokualine@starbulletin.com.
See also: Useful phone numbers