Elementary, junior high, and high school students' concerns about riding the big, yellow bus to school doesn't come just from the school bully these days.

One of Utah's 40 school districts, Granite has seen its fair share of alarming incidents on seemingly routine bus rides.

A group of rowdy high school athletes began throwing garbage out the window of the school bus on the ride home from a sporting event. When they hit a moving vehicle, the angry driver jumped out of his car and demanded entry onto the bus.

"I don't know if he wanted a piece of their hide or just to scream at them," said Tom Given, director of transportation for Granite School District.

When the aggravated traveler was asked to follow protocol and discuss the situation via the district transportation office, he resisted, but finally yielded. Transportation officials located the violating students and worked things out in a more reasonable fashion.

"His anger was solving nothing," Given said.

When a girl riding the school bus became "obnoxious," the bus driver asked her to move to the back of the vehicle to get under control. She subsequently called her mom and falsely recounted that she had been kicked off the bus.

Not thinking much of the all-too-common situation, 12 miles later, the driver did not make the connection between the woman standing in the middle of the street and the incident with the uncooperative student. When the bus stopped, so as to not hit the woman in the street, she marched on the bus and demanded to know why her daughter had been mistreated.

She refused to get off and the police were forced to intervene. Their presence alone was enough to scare her, but in the end, they had nothing to charge her with.

If signed, H.B. 74, which has passed both the House and Senate, would change all that.

"Unauthorized entry on a school bus prohibited" would slap unauthorized persons who step on a school bus with the intent to intimidate or cause physical harm to the driver or students with a $1,000 fine and six-month jail sentence - a class B misdemeanor, said Rep. Neal Hendrickson, D-West Valley, the bill's sponsor.

With a sticker in the window of the bus clearly stating the new law - and punishment upon violation - people would be informed and think twice before entering a bus without permission, the sponsor said.

A bus driver himself, Hendrickson said he introduced the legislation because of the many incidents happening in his district. Granite alone has 12 to 15 a year, Given said.

With approximately 165,000 children riding Utah's school buses every day, there is a high potential for risk.

The Granite district has 127 buses running more than 700 routes every day.

"We think we're being proactive," Given said. "We have little to no violence on our buses (but) should a person want to get on and refuse to leave, we'd have something to charge her with."

Brent Huffman, pupil transportation specialist for the Utah State office of Education, agrees.

He said police would no longer be confined to making empty threats to violators.

"This would give (warnings from police) some teeth," he said.

President of the Utah Education Association Pat Rusk said with attacks on children increasing, UEA's main concern is students' safety.

"When it comes to safety of students, when they're in our care, we want to do everything in our power to protect them. When they step on the bus, they're in our care," she said.

Havoc on school buses sometimes occurs when the school bully wants to continue a duel on the school bus that's not his, Given said. Other times, property owners get upset when a bus runs over their garbage can or causes a little fender bender.

Victims usually want to talk about the problem right then, so they'll enter the school bus, he said. They end up detaining the others on board and holding up traffic, and often get upset to the point of physical violence.

"You would never jump in someone's car," Given said. "People feel there's a right (to enter the school bus) because of the size of the vehicle."

Given said bus drivers are more than willing to talk with parents after school in the same fashion as a parent-teacher conference.

"It's hard enough to pay attention to the road and, in addition, supervise 80 some-odd kids you have your back toward," said Michael Hepner, executive director for the Utah School Employees Association, an organization created to represent classified school employees throughout the state of Utah.

USEA supports the bill because "it's in the best interest of the students on the bus to not have the potential disruptions," Hepner said.

So far, the bill hasn't been met with any concrete opposition and will likely be signed soon by Gov. Mike Leavitt.

"We're just crossing our fingers," Hendrickson said.

Alpine School District officials want to take every reasonable measure to secure safety on their buses and this bill might facilitate increased control.

"In concept, we are in agreement with the bill but we would have to see how it would be implemented and practiced," said Jerrilyn Mortensen, public information officer for the district.

She also noted that parents are generally in supportive of anything that would protect their children.

Margie Pulsipher's 13-year old son rides the bus to junior high every day. Although she said she hasn't had any safety concerns about her son's bus rides she realizes the potential for danger.

"There's just a lot of lunatics out there and people get really upset. It's really a concern for me that my kids would be exposed to that."

Huffman said he's glad to see a bill like this finally come to fruition.