​On May 12, 2023, about 7:21 a.m. central daylight time, a 2016 Bluebird school bus operated by the Reedsburg School District stopped to board students in the westbound lane of State Highway 23/33 in the Town of Excelsior, Sauk County, Wisconsin. As the bus slowed nearly to a stop, the driver deactivated the bus’s amber lights and activated the red lights and extended the stop arm. A 2010 Ford F-150 pickup truck, operated by a 17-year-old driver, was traveling west behind the bus. As the pickup truck approached the rear of the school bus, the driver braked and swerved the truck to the right, sideswiped the right-rear corner of the bus, continued across the paved shoulder onto a private driveway, and struck a 13-year-old student pedestrian who was waiting to board the bus. The student pedestrian sustained fatal injuries, and the pickup truck driver sustained minor injuries. The school bus driver and the 16 student passengers on the school bus were not injured.

​The pickup truck driver braked and swerved in response to the slowing and stopped school bus, but his actions were too late because he was distracted by his cell phone texting activity. This crash occurred despite the fact that as the bus was slowing as it approached the stop, the bus driver had activated the bus’s flashing amber warning lights, flashing red lights, and stop arm.

We found that a cell phone lock-out system that disables the use of features that are not related to the driving task can reduce cell phone–related distracted driving crashes. Likewise, driver monitoring systems that can detect and alert a distracted driver and bring their attention back to the driving task can also reduce cell phone–related distracted driving crashes. Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) 2013 Driver Distraction Guidelines are lacking because they do not incorporate advances in technology in the past 12 years and focus only on visual-manual distraction of in-vehicle electronic devices.

The pickup truck was not equipped with collision avoidance technology such as forward collision warning or automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems. Had the pickup truck been equipped with an AEB system meeting the minimum performance requirements set in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 127, the collision with the school bus could have been avoided or at least mitigated, which would also have prevented or mitigated the collision with the student pedestrian. The pickup truck’s high and blunt hood design (a front end that is more vertical than sloped) combined with its speed at the time of the collision contributed to the student pedestrian’s fatal injuries.

We determined that the probable cause of the fatal crash in the Town of Excelsior, Wisconsin, was the pickup truck driver’s distracted driving due to his texting, resulting in his collision with the right-rear corner of the school bus and with the student pedestrian waiting to board the school bus. Contributing to the severity of the injuries to the student pedestrian was the pickup truck’s speed, as well as its height and the shape of its front end.

​As a result of the investigation, we recommended:

​​To the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

• Develop and publish Driver Distraction Guidelines that address the design of current original equipment in-vehicle electronic devices, portable electronic devices, and aftermarket electronic devices to prevent driver distraction. (H-25-16)
  

​As a result of its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board reiterates the following safety recommendations:

To Apple, Inc., Google, Inc., HTC Corporation, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung Group, Sony Corporation:

• ​Develop a distracted driving lock-out mechanism or application for portable electronic devices that will automatically disable any driverdistracting functions when a vehicle is in motion, but that allows the device to be used in an emergency; install the mechanism as a default setting on all new devices and apply it to existing commercially available devices during major software updates. (H-20-8)