Crossing guard Travis Callis works outside Martinsburg North Middle School in Martinsburg, W.Va., on Sept. 5. (AP photo)

WASHINGTON — Anthony Taylor will never forget the look of horror on the student’s face. The school crossing guard was walking into the crosswalk in front of Washington Township High School in Indianapolis when a car with a young boy and his mom, who was dropping him off at school, suddenly appeared. The mom’s eyes grew wide, and the boy began vigorously hitting on his mother’s chest.

“Next thing, it was boom, lights out. That’s all I remember,” Taylor said. He woke up in the hospital hours after undergoing surgery for a fractured pelvis and other broken bones.

In many ways, Taylor was lucky. Despite the broken bones and the pins and metal plates to heal his body from that August 2018 collision, he returned to work.

Across the country, school crossing guards like Taylor, who stand in the cold, rain or heat to protect children, face the risk of injuries from drivers who may be distracted or in a hurry.

An investigation by The Associated Press and Cox Media Group Television Stations found that over the past 10 years, hundreds of school crossing guards — many of them of retirement age or older — have suffered injuries on the job after being hit by a vehicle, and dozens of them have died.

A full accounting is impossible. No federal agencies and just two states track how many crossing guards are injured or killed each year. And local police accident reports often have no code to distinguish between school crossing guards and other pedestrians hit near schools.

“Officers rarely stop to consider whether the injured ‘pedestrian’ was on duty,” said former Cornelius, North Carolina, Police Chief Bence Hoyle.

A database compiled by AP and Cox Media Group shows that 230 school crossing guards across 37 states and Washington, D.C., were struck by vehicles. Nearly three dozen were killed in these collisions. The cases, compiled from incident and accident reports requested from nearly 200 police departments, represent only a portion of guards injured and killed nationwide.

The investigation shows that in these cases, drivers who hit or even kill crossing guards rarely face serious consequences. Of the incidents involving 183 crossing guards where an outcome could be determined, nearly half resulted in traffic citations — such as “failure to yield to a pedestrian.” About a quarter of the drivers weren’t ticketed at all, while just over a quarter faced criminal charges. Police said several factors go into whether or not a driver who hits a crossing guard is charged, including things such as weather conditions or negligence by the person operating the vehicle.

Taken as a whole, these incidents highlight a largely underreported problem: Crossing guards, tasked with protecting children as they navigate busy streets in front of schools, can be casualties of dangerous roadways.

“It’s a huge responsibility to step out in front of a vehicle,” said Dacia Maisonave, a crossing guard trainer in Seminole County, Florida. “It is unfortunate that our crossing guards don’t have a lot of laws. The only thing they really have to protect them is the stop paddle.”

‘Just slow down’

The lack of a system to track injuries and deaths of crossing guards has hampered efforts to develop better safety measures or even assess just how dangerous the job is, experts say. School crossing guard protection remains a patchwork of state and local policies.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes survey data for on-the-job injuries and deaths across most industries, but school crossing guards are included in a job category with road construction flaggers — and the agency does not publish a fatality rate for it.

The AP calculated its own fatality rates for nearly 200 job classifications with at least 10,000 workers and 10 deaths in 2023, the most recent year of available records. Crossing guards and flaggers were in the top fifth of deadliest jobs, the AP’s analysis found, on par with power line installers and air transportation workers. It’s the only occupation in that top fifth that interacts with children daily.

Not enough being done

Among the incidents where AP and Cox Media Group could determine an outcome, around a quarter resulted in criminal charges. About 40% of those criminal charges occurred when the driver fled the scene.

Last year in Uvalde, Texas, elementary school crossing guard George Juarez was hospitalized after a pickup truck hit him and the driver fled the scene.

The driver hit the crossing guard after making an illegal left turn as Juarez attempted to redirect the truck that struck him.

The driver was charged with driving while intoxicated with an open container, and failure to stop and render aid.

The driver that hit and killed Steven Winn, a 67-year-old crossing guard in Layton, Utah, just after he helped a group of elementary students cross to school, was also charged with an even more serious offense — negligent homicide.

Families who lose loved ones in fatal traffic accidents say the unexpected financial burden can be staggering, since many guards are retirees who work part-time and don’t have benefits. Dozens of current and former guards or their families have set up GoFundMe pages to help cover medical and funeral costs.