11 students hospitalized after Pierce County school bus stops short to avoid red-light runner

The yellow school bus had the green light when it rolled into the intersection of East 128th Street and Waller Road East on Friday morning. Dozens of Collins Elementary students were on board, heading to class in Pierce County’s Franklin Pierce School District.

Moments later, a sedan moved into the same intersection against a red light, according to sheriff’s deputies. The bus driver hit the brakes hard. Inside, unbelted children were thrown forward, slamming their heads and necks into the seats in front of them.

By midmorning, 11 students were in local hospitals. None of the injuries was life-threatening, but the scene at the busy crossroads — flares, sirens, a line of ambulances — was a jarring reminder of how quickly a routine school commute can turn dangerous.

What happened

The crash, reported about 9:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 9, at East 128th and Waller Road East in unincorporated Pierce County, has renewed questions about safety on a corridor residents say has been hazardous for years. It is also drawing fresh attention to a longstanding gap in Washington law: Most large school buses in the state, including the one involved Friday, do not have passenger seatbelts, and are not required to.

Deputies with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said the Franklin Pierce school bus was traveling toward Collins Elementary School with 32 students on board when the collision occurred.

“The bus had the right of way,” sheriff’s spokesperson Deputy Carly Cappetto said in a briefing carried by local television stations. She said a sedan driven by an adult man “failed to yield at the light,” prompting the bus driver to make an emergency stop. Some accounts from local media indicate the two vehicles made contact; in all versions, deputies say the sedan driver is at fault.

Ten students were taken from the scene by ambulance to area hospitals for evaluation of what authorities described as minor injuries, largely to the head and neck. An 11th child was later taken to a hospital by family members. One student may have more serious but non-life-threatening injuries, deputies said. The sedan driver was also hospitalized with minor injuries after the car’s airbags deployed.

All of the remaining students, along with the bus driver, got off the bus on their own and were checked by first responders. Franklin Pierce School District officials arranged a second bus to carry uninjured children the remaining short distance to Collins Elementary.

“The safety and well-being of students is our top priority,” the district said in a written statement. “We are grateful to our transportation staff, school team, and first responders for their quick and compassionate response.”

Residents say the intersection has long been dangerous

For some families, the crash happened exactly where they feared it would.

Parent Delsie Baumgardner said her 6-year-old twins ride that route to school. When she heard there had been a crash involving a bus at East 128th and Waller, she said, she knew it might involve her children.

“My heart just sank, because I knew, you know?” Baumgardner told KIRO-TV. “I was shaking as well. But I just knew I had to hurry up and get there to make sure… if it was my kids and if they were okay.”

Baumgardner and other residents describe East 128th as a heavily used cut-through connecting drivers to larger arterials such as Canyon Road, Waller Road and Pacific Avenue. They say speeding and aggressive driving are commonplace.

“People tend to cut through 128 to get to either Canyon Road or Waller or Pacific,” Baumgardner said. “It’s just heavy traffic, and people speed down it.”

Neighbor Katina Perry, who lives near the intersection, said serious collisions there are frequent.

“There’s so many car accidents at this intersection… at least every day, every other day,” she said. Drivers, she added, “rev up and do like 40, 50, 60” miles an hour to beat the light.

Sheriff’s officials have not released information on how fast the sedan involved in Friday’s crash was traveling. Deputies said the investigation is ongoing and that potential traffic charges are pending. They have not publicly confirmed whether impairment is suspected.

The crash is the latest in a series of serious incidents along Waller Road East. In April 2025, a separate school bus–sedan collision on Waller near East 41st Street sent a car driver to the hospital in critical condition; students from Chief Leschi Schools aboard that bus were not hurt. In 2023, a bicyclist was killed in a suspected intentional hit-and-run along Waller between 128th Street East and 72nd Street, and a police chase involving an armed robbery suspect ended in a crash at the same 128th and Waller intersection.

Those cases involved different circumstances — a police pursuit, a hit-and-run, a separate bus crash — but together they highlight a corridor with a recent history of severe collisions. County transportation officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether East 128th and Waller has been designated a high-collision intersection or whether any changes to signal timing, signage or enforcement are under consideration.

Seatbelts remain a gap in Washington’s school bus rules

Friday’s crash also exposed how children inside the bus were protected — and where vulnerabilities remain.

The school bus was a full-size, district-operated vehicle, the standard yellow bus familiar to families across the region. It was not equipped with passenger seatbelts, which is typical for large buses in Washington.

When the driver braked sharply to avoid the sedan, all 32 students “lurched forward” inside the bus, striking the backs of the seats in front of them, according to deputies and district officials. That mode of injury — head and neck impacts in a sudden deceleration — is precisely what three-point seatbelts are designed to mitigate.

Unlike passenger cars, large school buses are not required under federal law to have seatbelts. Instead, they are built around a concept known as compartmentalization — closely spaced, high-backed, heavily padded seats intended to protect riders in many types of crashes without belts.

Washington state follows that federal baseline. State rules do not mandate belts for buses with a gross vehicle weight above 10,000 pounds, the category that covers most full-size school buses. A state regulation, WAC 392-145-021, requires each passenger to have a safe seat and remain seated while the bus is moving; it adds that if a bus is equipped with a seatbelt, the passenger must wear it properly.

In recent years, some advocates and lawmakers in Washington have pushed to go further. A bill introduced in the Legislature, House Bill 1118, originally would have required shoulder-harness seatbelts at every seating position on school buses manufactured after Sept. 1, 2024, and mandated automated safety cameras on all buses.

Supporters argued that belts would provide an added layer of protection in rollovers and side impacts and would reduce the kind of “projectile” injuries seen when buses brake suddenly.

But the proposal ran into resistance from school districts and others who cited costs, challenges retrofitting existing fleets, and concerns about slower evacuations if children had to unbuckle during a fire or rollover. After hearings, lawmakers stripped the seatbelt mandate from the bill. The version that advanced focused on expanding the use of automated stop-arm cameras — which record drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses — and on directing fine revenue into a School Bus Safety Account to help pay for safety systems and bus replacements.

As a result, Washington today encourages some safety upgrades but still does not require belts on most school buses. The Franklin Pierce bus involved Friday complied with current law.

What comes next

Nationally, school buses remain among the safest ways to get to and from school. Federal traffic data show that less than 1% of all traffic deaths involve occupants of school transportation vehicles, and the vast majority of fatalities in school bus–related crashes are people in other vehicles or on foot. Even so, the number of people killed in school bus–related incidents has risen in recent years, reflecting broader trends in speed and traffic volume.

For families watching firefighters and deputies swarm an intersection they drive through every day, those statistics offer only limited comfort.

In the coming days, investigators will reconstruct what happened at East 128th and Waller and prosecutors will decide what, if any, charges to file against the sedan driver. Franklin Pierce officials are likely to review bus routes and safety protocols. County engineers may face renewed questions about whether more can be done to slow drivers approaching a signal that serves a neighborhood elementary school.

On Monday morning, buses will again roll through the Clover Creek area, including past the same intersection where 11 children were sent to the hospital. Parents such as Baumgardner will once more watch their kids climb aboard and disappear around the corner.

“It’s scary,” she said. “You just expect them to get to school safe.”