Pedestrians, Emergency Vehicles, Buses, and School Buses

Pedestrians, Emergency Vehicles, and Buses on Guam

Quick Answer: On Guam you stop for a stopped school bus from either direction -- 16 GCA Section 3336(c) contains no divided-highway, median, or lane-count exception -- and you may not move again until every passenger in the immediate area of the bus has boarded or reached a position of safety. For an emergency vehicle sounding a siren and/or showing a red or blue lamp, pull parallel and as close as possible to the right-hand curb, clear of any intersection, stop, and stay stopped until it passes. For an ordinary bus you may never pass on the side passengers are entering or leaving, and where a safety zone or a controlled intersection lets you pass, 10 mph is an absolute ceiling, not a target.

Guam packs its "sharing the road" law into a handful of short statutes, and the written test draws on them heavily because these are the situations that kill people. Learn the exact trigger and the exact release condition for each rule -- most wrong answers on this part of the exam come from a driver who stopped correctly but started moving again too early.

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Pedestrians: marked and unmarked crosswalks

16 GCA Section 3329(a) requires the operator of a vehicle to yield the right of way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. That second phrase is the one the test loves. A crosswalk does not have to be painted. Every ordinary intersection carries a legal crosswalk across each leg whether or not there are white lines on the pavement -- and on Guam, where paint wears off fast in the sun and rain and the government leans on small reflective markers instead, "I did not see any lines" is not a defense.

Section 3329(b) adds the rule that prevents the deadliest crosswalk crash there is: whenever any vehicle has stopped at a marked or unmarked crosswalk to permit a pedestrian to cross, the operator of any other vehicle approaching from the rear shall not overtake and pass that stopped vehicle. If the car ahead of you stops for no obvious reason near an intersection, treat it as a pedestrian until proven otherwise. Swinging out around it puts you into a crosswalk at speed with your view blocked.

Two more pedestrian duties fall on the driver:

• Section 3328 -- sidewalks. Before driving over or upon any sidewalk or pedestrian path, you must yield to any pedestrian approaching on it. This is the rule you obey every time you pull out of a driveway, a gas station, a parking lot, or a store lot across a sidewalk.
• Section 3329.1 -- blind and visually impaired pedestrians. A driver approaching a pedestrian who is blind or visually impaired and carrying a predominantly white or metallic cane (with or without a red tip), or using a guide dog, must take all necessary precautions to avoid injury. A driver who fails to do so is liable in damages. And the pedestrian's failure to carry a cane or use a guide dog is expressly not contributory negligence.

Pedestrians carry duties too, and the exam tests whether you know that a pedestrian duty does not cancel the driver's duty:

Jaywalking on Guam has a narrow statutory definition: Section 3332 makes it unlawful for a pedestrian to cross a road at any point between adjacent intersections that are controlled by a traffic control signal device or a police officer, except in an officially designated crosswalk. Crossing mid-block where no signals control the adjacent intersections is not jaywalking under this section -- the pedestrian simply has to yield. Section 3330 separately forbids standing in or on the traveled portion of a roadway to solicit a ride.

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Emergency vehicles: the trigger, the four steps, and the release

16 GCA Section 3333 governs conduct on the immediate approach of an authorized emergency vehicle. The handbook lists the vehicles: ambulance, police, fire equipment, civil defense, explosive ordnance disposal, and similar.

The trigger is disjunctive. The duty arises when the emergency vehicle is sounding a siren OR having at least one lighted lamp exhibiting red or blue light visible under normal atmospheric conditions from a distance of 500 feet to the front. You do not get to wait for both. A silent police unit running blue lights triggers the full duty by itself.

The four steps for drivers, in order:

1. Yield the right of way.
2. Immediately drive to a position parallel to, and as close as possible to, the right-hand edge or curb of the highway.
3. Clear of any intersection. If you are inside an intersection when you hear the siren, do not freeze there -- continue through, then pull right and stop. Stopping in the intersection boxes in the very vehicle you are trying to help.
4. Stop and remain in that position until the emergency vehicle has passed, unless a police officer or another officer authorized to direct traffic tells you otherwise.

Pedestrians get their own instruction in Section 3333(b): remain in a place of safety, or proceed to the nearest curb or place of safety, until the emergency vehicle has passed.

Two related duties round out the emergency-scene rules:

• Fire hoses (Section 3340). No vehicle may be driven over any unprotected fire hose resting on a public highway for use at a fire or in answer to a fire alarm, without the consent of the fire department officers at the scene or the peace officer in command.
• Disaster sightseeing. The handbook states that any person who goes for sightseeing purposes to the scene of a disaster where police, firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency services are required, and who by doing so interferes with the essential services at the scene, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

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Passenger carriers: the 10 mph ceiling

Section 3336(a) covers every vehicle stopped to take on or discharge passengers -- a public bus, a hotel shuttle, a tour bus in Tumon. If you meet or overtake such a stopped vehicle, you may not pass it on the side on which passengers are entering or leaving until two things are true: the stopped vehicle has started, and all passengers who alighted have reached the side of the highway.

There is one narrow exception. Where a safety zone has been established, or at an intersection where traffic is controlled by a peace officer or a mechanical traffic signal, you need not come to a full stop. You may proceed past the stopped carrier at a speed "not greater than is reasonable and proper and in no event at a speed greater than 10 miles per hour," exercising due caution for the safety of all pedestrians. Read that as a ceiling: conditions can require slower, but nothing can justify faster. The same 10 mph figure appears in Guam's speed statute, Section 3301, which requires you to reduce to 10 mph when passing a bus loading or discharging passengers unless the bus is stopped off the roadway.

One Guam-specific caution: the painted center lane is not a safety zone. The handbook is blunt that Guam's center left-turn lane -- the one locals call the Suicide Lane -- is for turning left only, is not a passing lane, and is not a pedestrian refuge.

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School buses: Guam's strictest stopping rule

Section 3336(b) -- the sign. Every school bus operated to transport school pupils must display, on both the front and the rear, a plainly visible sign reading "School Bus - Stop" in letters not less than 8 inches high and of proportionate width. No vehicle other than a school bus may display that sign. Misuse of the sign is punishable by a fine of not less than $10 nor more than $50.

Section 3336(c) -- the stop. The driver of any vehicle approaching upon any highway from either direction a school bus that is so equipped and that has stopped to receive or discharge passengers shall at once bring the vehicle to a complete stop, and shall not proceed to pass the bus from either direction until all passengers in the immediate area of the bus have been received into or discharged from the bus and have reached a position of safety from vehicular traffic. Same penalty range: $10 to $50.

Two things make this rule harder than most mainland versions, and both are tested:

• There is no exception. Guam's statute contains no divided-highway carve-out, no median or barrier exception, and no lane-count exception. Oncoming traffic stops too. If you learned to drive stateside, this is the single most likely rule to get wrong.
• The release condition is about people, not equipment. You may move again when the passengers in the immediate area have boarded or have reached safety -- not the moment the door closes or a light stops flashing.

Section 3336(d) raises the stakes: a person who violates Section 3336(c) and thereby causes bodily injury or damage to personal or public property shall be charged with reckless driving, punishable under 16 GCA Section 3111 (which carries license suspension or revocation) and Section 9107 of Chapter 9 of Title 16. Guam's own case law shows why the legislature added that subsection -- in Fejerang v. Tenorio, a deaf student riding a school bus was injured when a third party passed the bus while its lights were flashing and its stop sign was out.

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Trap check before you move on

• "Only traffic behind the bus has to stop." Wrong on Guam -- either direction.
• "A divided highway lets oncoming traffic keep going." No such exception in Section 3336.
• "I can pass a stopped bus at 25 mph if a signal controls the intersection." 10 mph is the maximum, and only for ordinary passenger carriers, not school buses.
• "The emergency vehicle needs siren and lights." Siren and/or a red or blue lamp visible 500 feet to the front.
• "Stop right where I am for the ambulance." Pull parallel to the right curb, clear of any intersection, then stop.
• "Crosswalks have to be painted." Unmarked crosswalks at intersections count.