Yes! Our neighborhood is 4 miles from the schools. The main route is down a 55 MPH state highway with no sidewalks. It got an awful lot of local press when teachers arrived to find students outside in the cold in the dark in the middle of winter, some there for over an hour, because their parent had to drop them off that early so they could proceed to work. There were a couple of kids who walked and it took a number of hours to get there, because the schools are in the middle of a mostly-rural area. It was cruel, it really was.
I dont think there is any confusion, except for not understanding what you think you have to gain from the kids gathering at the corner of your yard instead of in front of your house. Them stopping adjacent to your property isnt an understandable complaint when you are happy with them stopping adjacent to your property 20 feet away.
As has been said, a school bus should not stop in the middle of an intersection, and your driveway appears to be less than 2 bus lengths away from the intersection. Where it is stopping is where it should stop to pick up kids on the NW corner. Your driveway is only part of it as being the nearest landmark.
Why they dont pick up the kids on the NE side of the intersection is a different question (maybe it was designated, maybe the driver is just going to where the kids are gathered), but one you dont seem to be all that worried about either.
I apologize.
Yes.
That is the mystery of the week. Hey, didnât the âmystery movie of the weekâ usually involve murder? No, donât go there!
None of that has anything to do with confirming the number of buses running. Besides, maybe the levy was to help fund additional buses to address overcrowding issues from growing neighborhoods, and when that failed they were forced to go with solution B using existing resources. If they only have the resources to provide busing for 1/2 the high school, they cant provide busing for any of the high school.
Arenât you getting bored with this by now?
You keep attributing things to me that I havenât said.
Iâm not happy to have the bus stop on our property. I wish theyâd stick to using the NE corner for all bus stops - period - forevermore. Then sheâd be dealing with any issues and not us.
This may be one of those times when the public good takes priority over private property rights. If my neighbor decides she doesnât want the bus stop on her corner, and I donât want it on our corner, and I wonât allow it in our driveway, then where do they put it? Not looking for an answer, because that wonât happen.
What do I have to gain? IANAL. Itâd be nice if one chimed in. These are only my thoughts.
It seems to be generally recognized by the school district, the State Education Dept., and the local police, that our driveway is private property. The general public canât park in it without our permission. We can ask/tell people to leave. We canât prevent anyone from using the sidewalk to pass through because it is a public right-of-way, but they donât have the right to remain on the sidewalk and block our ingress and egress to our property.
It does not seem to be generally recognized that the corner sidewalk area is private property in the same sense. Itâs entirely within the easement area and is a public right-of-way. It may be âourâ corner, but people have the right to pass through and use it for legal purposes. We donât have exclusive rights to it.
In my state, our liability depends a lot on the status of someone on our property. If youâre an invitee (guest) or a licensee (here to do business with us) and weâre found liable for a hazardous condition on our property, there should not be much of an issue with getting our homeownerâs insurance to pay a claim.
If youâre a trespasser, itâs different. We donât owe a duty of care to trespassers. Generally, we wouldnât be held liable. On one hand, that sounds like a good thing. On the other hand, if insurance refuses to pay out an injury claim for a trespasser, like @JoeFriday said, guess who is getting sued? Itâs in our best interests to try to minimize the instances of regular, prolonged, trespassing.
If someone is remaining in our driveway without our permission, itâs a trespass situation. If they remain on our corner, theyâre not. Within reason, They canât pitch a tent and make it their home.
Driveway = trespassing with possibly greater potential for insurance claim denial and subsequent lawsuit. Trespasser probably wouldnât win, but still a big hassle.
Corner = no trespassing, although theyâre not invitees or licensee, with greater potential for an easier insurance payout.
And I could be all wrong about that, but thatâs my current stance.
Just from a pure safety standpoint, as a parent, would you want your kid being told to stand around and wait in someoneâs driveway for the school bus every morning, when there are perfectly safe, open, public corners to wait on?
From a pure safety standpoint Iâd drive my kid to school myself.
What âopen public cornerâ? The corner sidewalk is as much public space as the apron of your driveway.
There is zero difference between the area between the sidewalk and the road in front of your house, and the area between the sidewalk and road at the corner of the property. Your property rights and potential liability are the same in both places. And there is no more of less issue with the apron of your driveway as with the grass apron the rest of the way around the property. And there is no more or less potential liability (and no more or less trespassing) with a kid running up your driveway as with a kid running across your lawn. You are drawing an arbitrary line, and making it the focus of your argument.
Another possible solution - park your husband or a willing associate in a lawn chair in the driveway with nothing other than boxers and a bathrobe, holding a can of beer and a cigar at that hour of the morning. Folks will avoid your property like crazy!
If that were true, Iâd have no right at all to ask anyone to leave the apron of our driveway. People could set up lawn chairs and drink tea in the summer. It would be quite a spectacle, wouldnât it? If I wanted to go somewhere, Iâd have to drive over my lawn.
The purpose of the public easement has to come into play somehow, doesnât it? Tree services, utilities, street repair, regular pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, are major purposes behind them. The driveway apron doesnât have trees or grass, but itâs main purpose is providing vehicular access to our private driveway.
This morning I didnât go outside and the video shows the same car dropped a kid off in our driveway again. Long story short, the kid walked to the corner, came back with another kid. They started a snowball fight on the tree lawn, which is harmless. Then one kid chased the other kid into our driveway, down the apron, and into the street, which isnât harmless, especially in the dark with kids wearing dark clothing.
You continue to miss the point - if you can kick someone off the apron of your driveway for a given reason, you can kick them off the grass on the corner for that same reason too. Iâm not even commenting on if you are right or wrong, just that you are drawing an arbitrary line between the two spaces. If you acknowledge there is âopen public spaceâ at the corner, that âopen public spaceâ extends across the entire front (and side) of your home.
Iâll have to research the issue some more. From the light reading Iâve just been doing, attorneys have written in response to questions about easements that it depends on what the easement is for and whether itâs for non-exclusive use or not.
Iâm just not convinced yet that our driveway apron is meant for general pedestrian public access, even if the sidewalks, and tree lawns are meant for public access. Utilities, yes, definitely. Vehicles, yes, definitely.
Iâm not as worried about this as I was. I think having this discussion has helped me a lot. Some of you have made me laugh and I thank you so much for that! I needed it.
My grandmother used to call me a worrywart, even when I was a kid. I guess that hasnât changed much.
Weâre pretty responsible and keep our property in good shape. We donât have dogs. If any of these kids got hurt because of their horsing around, itâd be pretty tough to find us at fault, I think.
Iâll look into it some more, because Iâm really trying to learn about this.
If a kid gets hurt and if they somehow sue you then you counter sue the school district. Right?
Also kudos for your thick skin on this thread.
Youâve never mentioned where you are located, so no one can talk specifically. But this type of easement is pretty standard, and typically a solid 6-10ft off the edge of the street, for the length of the street; not limited to just the sidewalk, and not broken by encroaching driveways or other improvements. That youâve chosen to pave a 10ft section of the land covered by that easement wouldnt give you any additional property rights that dont already exist with the grass portion.
Just forget the whole âbus stop without my permissionâ stuff, and, if you feel the need to keep pressing the issue, focus on the kidsâ nuisance violations outside the scope of it being a bus stop. Keep telling the school to keep their kids in line, not insisting they pick the kids up 20 feet down the same property line.
I wish, but no. They refuse to admit any culpability in this.
Thank you.
I wish. That wonât work. Here is a snippet of their official position:
Thatâs why they said it wasnât their responsibility if kids were still in my driveway after they called the parents.
Never mind that the kids themselves are violating the 3rd part of that policy.
Donât forget the accompanying music. âThe wheels on the bus go round and roundâŚâ
Non-liability. One has public access, the other is private property. Pretty straightforward.
How so? They have the same right, or no right, to be anywhere along her property line. And she has the same level of liability anywhere along her property line.