Moorhead Police, the ClayCounty Sheriff’s Office,and the Minnesota State Patrol joined forces with the Moorhead School District for “Busted by the Bus” on April 14th and 15th. The project is an effort to reduce distracted driving around schools and school buses and decrease school bus arm violations. So far there have been 139 school bus violations have been reported to the Moorhead Police Department during 2014-2015 school year.

A team of officers monitored traffic from a school bus while others were stationed along the route to issue citations to distracted drivers. 86 vehicles were stopped during the two-day initiative. Officers issued 39 citations for distracted driving and 29 citations for other offenses. Officers observed and cited drivers for numerous distracted driving behaviors, including texting, making video calls on FaceTime, eatingwith both hands, reading and applying make-up while driving.

“Any time it takes your eyes or your attention away, that affects your ability to drive in that situation,” said Lieutenant Deric Swenson of the Moorhead Police Department. “But until some people are caught, they won’t stop that driving behavior.”

The project was funded by a grant from Toward Zero Deaths, a Minnesota traffic safety initiative that aims to reduce crashes and bring roadside fatalities to zero through education, enforcement, engineering andemergency trauma response.