After Loss, Family Pursues Bus Rules for Sake of Others

LAGUNA NIGUEL — With the naivete of political neophytes, Thomas and Barbara Lanni had no doubts that state legislators would see things their way.

Who would oppose a bill requiring school buses to flash red lights at every bus stop? A bill that, they reasoned, would protect children like their 7-year-old son Tommy, who in April 1994 was hit and killed by a car in Laguna Niguel after getting off his bus at the wrong stop.

But even with sponsorship from then-state Sen. Marian Bergeson of Orange County, the school bus bill was watered down by legislators before being voted into law in 1994. The Lanni family was angry, discouraged, frustrated--and still determined to prevent other parents from suffering the agonizing loss of a child.

With the help of Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), the Lannis are pushing another version of the school bus bill and this time are taking the personal approach.

The entire family, including 8-year-old Kate Lanni, visited Sacramento last month to make a personal appeal for AB1297 to the Assembly Transportation Committee.

“They came up to us afterwards and shook our hands,” Barbara Lanni said. “They gave a great deal of respect to us and our daughter. It’s really given us a lot of hope.”

Life has not given the Lanni family a lot to be hopeful for in the last three years.

After losing their son, the Lannis sued the Capistrano Unified School District for neglect and pushed for state legislation “because we felt it was an obligation, a duty on our part to keep what happened to us from happening to other families,” Barbara Lanni said.

The watering down of the school bus bill was “devastating to us,” she said. “We couldn’t believe the Legislature could be so lax with the care of children.”

The lawsuit dragged on for over a year, providing a constant reminder of a bright, cheerful boy “that we loved with all our heart,” Tommy’s mother said. But in the end, the Lannis not only lost the initial judgment, but the judge ordered the family to pay the school district $20,000 in attorney’s fees.

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In their suit, the Lannis alleged that the bus driver acted improperly by not flashing the bus lights, letting Tommy off at the wrong stop and not escorting the first-grader across the street. School officials said the boy got off the bus on his own and the driver didn’t know he was crossing the street.

The cash judgment hangs over their heads while the case is being appealed, much like the hospital bills from Tommy’s hospitalization still owed by the family.

“This has been really, really hard,” Barbara Lanni said. “We had counseling for both my daughter and myself. . . . This is really been a mission for Tom.

“He has taken this [fight to pass school bus legislation] like a personal pursuit,” she said. “It’s like he has Tommy on his shoulder.”

But the family has also pulled together during the tough times.

“What really keeps me in a happy state is my daughter Kate,” Barbara Lanni said. “She is a joy and a pleasure. We do things together like go to church every Sunday, and we always appreciate what we do have.”

Even though the Lanni family feels good about their chances in the Legislature this time, there is potential for their vision of the bill to be altered again.

Current state law requires flashing lights only when children are crossing the street. The Bergeson bill would have allowed school districts to ask for permission to designate additional stops where bus drivers can flash lights.

The original version was stripped because of concerns that forcing cars to make impromptu stops on busy, multilane roads when a school bus flashed its lights would create its own dangers.

“It would become a hazard to traffic,” said Mehdi Morshed, staff director for the Senate Transportation Committee, “and increase opportunities for rear-enders.

“You sympathize with victims and their situations, but you generally don’t legislate based on individual cases,” Morshed said. If the Bergeson bill had been allowed to pass as originally presented, “we could actually have wound up causing more death and injury.”

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The new version still calls for bus drivers to flash red lights at signaled intersections and multilane streets.

Presented to Laguna Niguel this week, city staff called for limiting the law to require school buses to flash lights only at residential streets and minor roads.

Thomas Lanni says the state’s safety priorities are out of balance.

“The notion that the lights need only flash if children are required to cross the street is flawed,” he told the City Council. “This at first seems like a logical argument until one introduces the unpredictability of an immature child who may be distracted or confused, or in my son’s case, lost.

“A child should not have to pay with their lives for an innocent mistake.”

Morrow agrees with Lanni, adding that drivers will get used to stopping whenever they seeing flashing school bus lights.

“I think we’re so accustomed to the way things have been,” Morrow said. “Most of the states in the union have this law, and it will be clear for everybody. When a school bus has stopped and lights go on, cars should also stop.”

AB1297 is expected to come before the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, the final hurdle for the bill before it goes to the Assembly floor for a general vote. If it passes, it then goes to the Senate for consideration.