Larive says, "There's no way of walking on this highway, it's just too dangerous. I watch people when they go by here, they're texting or they're reading a newspaper or some kind of paper. I see them all the time and they're just not paying attention." This is the issue facing Bubba Larive and other parents of children living in the Valley Village community of Box Elder. Their children walk miles along the busy Ellsworth Road to get to school everyday.

     But parents say that it's just a matter of time before someone gets hurt while walking. Larive says, "If they keep going the way they are here it's going to happen. It's like jumping in with sharks, you're going to get bit sooner or later you just never know. I hope to God it's not one of my kids of anybody else's kids, but accidents do happen, people are people, and humans are human."

     And the unpredictable drivers are the reason that Larive stands out on the street every morning, holding his sign and urging drivers to slow down because they are now sharing the road with children on their way to school. Larive says, "The walk is nothing. I walked longer than this when I was in school but that's not the issue. The issue is the danger of this road, there's no way to walk but on the road with the traffic."

     Some of the parents in the Valley Village community have taken it upon themselves to solve the bus issue. They've been paying a private company, Harlow's School Bus Services, to safely transport their children to school, but not everyone can afford this service.

     The Mayor of Box Elder says he's working hard with the Douglas School District's Superintendent to resolve the bus issue, because he says these children are the future of Box Elder. Mayor Griffiths says, "My number one concern is the safety of children. Because we could talk about businesses, we could talk economics, we could talk about all those development things but the future of this city is the children, so we need to keep them safe.I am working with the school. We have a good superintendent of the schools here, Dr. Scheer. He's very concerned about this, I'm working with him and we're going to resolve this problem someway. We're going to resolve it."

Darren Leeds