BOSTON — Almost a decade after the death of her daughter, Amanda Taylor testified in front of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security this week to advocate for passage of “An Act Creating a Special Commission to Examine School Bus Safety” (S.2861), also known as “Summer’s Law.”
Summer Steele, of Plainfield, was 9 years old when she was killed on Oct. 28, 2016, after her backpack got caught in the door of a school bus and she was run over. Summer, a third grader at Sanderson Academy at the time, would have been a high school senior this year.
“Right now, I should be planning for her graduation and her senior prom,” Taylor told legislators. “I don’t need my name to be remembered, but my daughter Summer deserves to be, so please remember her by passing this legislation.”
S.2861 would create a commission to examine school bus safety and “recommend updates to school bus safety standards and operator training requirements, including potential adoption of safety sensors, additional monitors, enhanced training, and other measures to protect students while on buses, during boarding, disembarking and at bus stops,” according to a summary provided by primary sponsor state Sen. Paul Mark, D-Becket.
The bill, petitioned by Mark along with state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, may install sensors in all new school buses, but would not add them to existing buses. If the state added the sensors to all existing buses, of which there are 9,446, according to Sabadosa, the cost would be around $10 million. She said the state got that number as an estimate from Mayser USA, an international company that develops anti-pinch sensor technology that reacts “to even very small objects by stopping the closing movement of the door,” according to Mayser USA.
“Unfortunately, this is the second testimony I’ve given to a state committee this year in regards [to] school bus safety,” Nicholas Lusk, head of operations at Mayser USA, said in virtual testimony. “For years, this proven safety technology was not required or standardized for school buses. … The incident that occurred in Plainfield 10 years ago was not the first incident. This century, there have been nearly 50 reported incidents nationwide, each involving a child placed in danger with four tragic losses of life.”
Lusk went on to say that any future law that Massachusetts passes regarding school bus safety needs a “clear, enforceable and standardized safety test … to ensure that children are safe when boarding and exiting the school bus.”
Sabadosa took the stand with Taylor, informing the members of the joint committee that this technology exists and that “over the years, the technology has truly evolved.” These sensors that are being suggested are currently being used on train doors and elevators, Sabadosa said. She added that all of Europe uses these sensors as well.
If this law were to pass, Massachusetts would not be the first state in New England to create legislation around school bus safety. In 2023, Maine passed legislation that required new buses to be equipped with anti-pinch sensors, though Sabadosa said that the Pine Tree State is currently working to retrofit all of its existing buses as well.
This is not the first time a bill around children safely disembarking their school bus has made its way through hearings and testimonies in the Massachusetts Legislature. As recently as 2021, a Senate bill was introduced that would have installed monitoring devices on school buses for the “purpose of enforcing violations against the owner of a motor vehicle whose vehicle failed to stop for a school bus when required to do so.” Comerford was a petitioner on this bill as well. It was referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and no further action was taken.
Sabadosa said they’ve been working on this legislation for “quite a while,” and there have been various iterations of the version presented before the joint committee. This wasn’t the first meeting that Taylor had taken part in before the joint committee, either — 10th Essex District Rep. Daniel Cahill thanked Taylor for coming back to the State House after they had previously discussed “Summer’s Law” a few weeks before.
“I found that it was, although painful, helpful to know a little bit more of the details of what had happened to your daughter,” Cahill told Taylor.
He also asked Taylor or Sabadosa to explain to the committee if sensors would have prevented Summer’s death, to which Taylor responded that a sensor would have alerted the driver, Tendzin Parsons, that she was caught in the door. With no sensor, she said, “there was nothing there to make him look.”
“Summer paid the ultimate price for something you have the ability to change,” Taylor said. “Her life should be the last one lost this way. Please make sure her story is the reason this does not happen again. The people that have the power to prevent the next tragedy are right in this room.”
