Every day, thousands of drivers in the United States illegally pass stopped school buses. Authorities are increasingly relying on surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence to solve the problem.
School bus safety camera powered by AI goes on sale in White Plains
The cameras are designed to catch drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses.
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WASHINGTON – In a packed conference room in the nation’s capital, dozens of people held their breath as video monitors showed the frighteningly common sight of a car speeding past children approaching a school bus.
“Terrible,” one person said as images of children hit by cars but not seriously injured appeared on the screen.
Some people looked away from the screen. Some people were holding back tears.
The clip was played during the first National School Bus Safety Summit on Dec. 10. The summit brought together hundreds of federal, state and local leaders, as well as safety and transportation experts, to discuss the epidemic of reckless drivers that endanger children across the country.
Officials say thousands of drivers illegally pass school buses every day, despite flashing lights and stop arms. And with over 500,000 school buses on the road, millions of violations occur each year.
The illegal operation ended in tragedy.
In 2018, a driver in Rochester, Indiana, overtook a parked school bus and fatally struck a 9-year-old girl and her 6-year-old twin brother. This incident has led to reforms, with calls for tougher penalties for violators.
Self-driving cars have been in the spotlight lately, especially after a driverless Waymo taxi in Austin, Texas, was caught swerving around a stopped school bus at least 20 times, prompting a federal investigation and calls for the taxi service to be shut down.
Over the course of the one-day summit, policy leaders and safety experts discussed some of the enforcement tactics currently gaining attention across the country and ways to improve education about school bus safety.
The most popular enforcement tools are surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence.
A growing number of school buses nationwide are equipped with high-definition cameras and AI models specifically trained to record drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses.
The new wave of high-tech bus surveillance is being led by BusPatrol, the nation’s largest stop-arm camera provider. The company hosted the summit with support from nonprofit organizations Governors Highway Safety Association and Safe Kids Worldwide.
Since its launch in 2017, BusPatrol’s cameras have been installed on more than 40,000 school buses in nearly 20 states, and the for-profit company controls about 90% of the market share.
The company has installed cameras on one in 10 school buses nationwide, and is sounding the alarm on the problem of near misses between cars and schoolchildren, which it calls an “endemic” problem.
“This is the first time in history that we’ve had enough sensors in this country to really see how big a problem this is,” Justin Myers, Bus Patrol’s president and chief innovation officer, said in an interview with USA TODAY before the summit.
“The number of close calls that our cameras have captured is literally unfathomable,” he says. “The main reason we convened this summit…is a cry for help.”
How many drivers illegally passed school buses?
This year, the National Association of Pupil Transportation Services Officials released a survey of 114,000 school bus drivers asking them to report violations.
Drivers reported more than 67,000 illegal overtakings a day. The study projects across the entire school year and suggests more than 39 million violations occur annually.
The fines and harsh penalties drivers face for violations are becoming increasingly hefty, from $1,000 fines to license suspensions and points, resulting in an alarming number of violations.
For example, some states, such as Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, and Delaware, apply six demerit points to an offender’s driver’s license, which can lead to suspension, increased insurance premiums, and even loss of license.
If the driver causes injury or death, the penalties are even more severe, resulting in higher fines, felonies, and jail time.
Safety experts at the summit said more could be done to deter violations, including better tracking of repeat offenders and tougher penalties depending on the situation.
“We need a law that gradually changes the penalties when school buses are involved,” said Ohio appellate judge Kate Huffman.
School buses and educational inequality
Several panelists emphasized the role of education in curbing traffic violations.
“A lot of people don’t know what to do around school buses,” said Adam Jussi, automated enforcement supervisor for the Howard County Police Department in Maryland.
The county recently ran a messaging campaign explaining the responsibilities of drivers around stopped school buses, posting images on social media and attaching school bus safety instructions to residents’ water bills.
At the federal level, panelists praised the efforts of Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.). This year, he introduced a bill that would direct the Department of Transportation to “develop and distribute a national public safety campaign about the dangers of illegally passing a stopped school bus.”
The bill, called “Brake for Kids,” is modeled after the famous “Click It or Ticket” campaign, which significantly increased awareness and compliance rates of seat belt safety.
However, not all bus programs are the same. In large cities like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, most children take public transportation or walk to school. Additionally, some areas do not provide bus service to students who live within a one-mile radius of the school.
Marisa Jones, managing director of the Safe Routes to School Partnership, a nonprofit that aims to make alternatives to school buses safer, said it’s essential for parents and educators to teach students how to ride safely as pedestrians and cyclists.
“We have to teach our children, and they have to learn safe behavior,” she said, adding that the “responsibility” lies with adults to make children’s journeys to school safer.
Role of surveillance cameras
In 2018, the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation after a fatal crash in Indiana that killed three children, and subsequently released a list of recommendations to prevent similar accidents from happening again.
One of the recommendations encouraged states to enact laws that would allow stop-arm cameras on school buses to identify violators and issue citations to them.
Since then, at least 24 states have passed such laws, allowing companies like BusPatrol to begin rolling out their technology across the country.
The results were promising. According to Bus Patrol, 90% of people who are ticketed after being identified by the company’s cameras do not reoffend.
“There are millions of reports where it works and the person never commits another violation,” Myers said, suggesting that automated enforcement “changes driver behavior permanently.”
Ubiquitous camera enforcement has led to safer driving habits than ever before. Consider speed cameras and red light cameras. Both have been shown to be effective in improving driver safety.
How does a stop arm camera work?
BusPatrol installs multiple 4K cameras on the front, back, and sides of school buses. The camera is only turned on when the bus is in operation and is connected to Ava, a proprietary AI trained to spot vehicles illegally moving around stopped buses.
When the software detects a potential breach, it stitches together relevant footage from all angles to create a 30-second evidence package.
The video is sent to the BusPatrol processor, who reviews the footage multiple times before sending the evidence to local law enforcement, who ultimately decide whether to issue a ticket.
The company doesn’t sell high-tech equipment to local governments. Instead, they rent out cameras and collect a portion of the money generated through tickets and fines issued by local police.
“We guarantee each community that taxpayers will never foot the bill,” Myers said. “This is a completely offender-funded program” – and it’s a program poised to continue to grow.
Several states, including New Jersey, Kentucky, and Ohio, are actively considering legislation that would allow storm arm camera technology on school buses.
Real-time violation pairs
Before the summit began, several officials toured first-hand some of the technology being installed on school buses across the country.
Shortly after 8 a.m., state and local officials, including D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Carlos Heraudo, boarded a yellow school bus equipped with Bus Patrol cameras.
As Myers explained how the system monitors for violations, the driver circled several blocks in downtown Washington, D.C., not far from the White House.
The bus immediately slowed down and stopped. The driver turned on the flashing lights and deployed the stop arm.
Moments later, two cars wrapped around the back of the bus and sped down the road as staff watched through the windows.
Contributor: Phaedra Trethan
