Greece Central School District buses are now equipped with cameras intended to catch drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses.
When the cameras go live Friday, Greece will be the fourth local district to use the Monroe County School Bus Safety program, a partnership between county government and the tech company BusPatrol that launched last year. The Hilton, Webster, and East Irondequoit districts previously joined.
“It's about safety, it's about education, and it's about accountability,” County Executive Adam Bello said during a news conference Monday. “It's really about educating drivers, motorists, that when they come across a school bus with a stop arm out and the red lights are flashing, they have to stop. They cannot pass those stopped school buses.”
From October through the end of February, the county issued 1,200 citations and 800 warnings to drivers captured on camera passing buses that were stopped with their lights on and their stop signs activated, Bello said.
Through the program, BusPatrol installs the camera systems on the buses at no cost to the county or the district. The cameras are mounted in several locations around the buses, and they capture footage of vehicles when they pass stopped buses.
That footage is reviewed by BusPatrol, and if the company detects a possible violation, it forwards the footage to the county Department of Public Safety, which then determines whether to issue a citation to the vehicle’s registered owner.
“This dangerous practice is something that our drivers experience each and every day, multiple times a day, and it's not OK,” said Greece Superintendent Kathleen Graupman. “For the safety of the 9,000 students that we transport every day, this risky practice cannot continue.”
A violation comes with a $250 civil fine. The county gets 60% of the fines and BusPatrol gets the other 40%.
Districts across the state and country have stop-arm camera programs with BusPatrol, and in some communities, the efforts have been controversial. In recent months, a state appellate court panel threw out three tickets issued in Suffolk County, citing a lack of evidence that children were getting on or off the buses.
A judge in Colonie, near Albany, recently dismissed a week’s worth of trials challenging tickets generated based on BusPatrol technology and findings, according to the Albany Times-Union.
BusPatrol President Justin Meyers said during Monday’s news conference that the company has begun providing its partners with additional footage in the “evidence package” it presents to them. That includes photos that show children boarding or exiting the buses.
The cameras take photos of the buses’ front mirrors when children are boarding or exiting to protect their identities, Meyers said.
