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.

AP, COX MEDIA GROUP INVESTIGATION: CROSSING GUARD SAFETY

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.

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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, DC, 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.