DECEMBER 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 11
PHOTO ENFORCEMENT EYES ON BUSES
A school bus stop-arm camera, like this yellow device attached to the side of a bus, can catch drivers illegally passing vehicles (Photo courtesy of
American Traffic Solutions).
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Long Island’s school buses will soon
be equipped with new technology that
automatically generates traffic tickets
for drivers who illegally pass a bus
when it's stopped while children get
on or off.
Nassau and Suffolk county lawmakers
have approved legislation
authorizing local school districts to
start the process of contracting the
devices known as school bus stoparm
cameras after New York State
legalized the photo enforcement
method earlier this year.
“I have seen cars zooming past
stopped school buses,” said Suffolk
County Legis. Tom Cilmi (R-East
Islip), the legislature’s Republican
leader. “I have witnessed near misses.
We have to do everything in our
power to protect our kids.”
Twenty-one states nationwide
have legalized school bus stop-arm
cameras that mail home fines to drivers
who break laws against driving
by a stopped school bus, according
to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.
Vehicles pass stopped school buses
about 50,000 times daily, according
to statistics provided by the New
York Association for Pupil Transportation,
a nonprofit school bus safety
advocacy group that also has been
calling for the cameras for years.
Under the law, violators will be fined
$250 for a first offense, $275 for a
second offense within 18 months,
and $300 for a third or subsequent
offenses within 18 months.
Critics have called such traffic-enforcement
cameras intrusive and a
ploy for lawmakers to plug budget
gaps in the name of public safety —
an argument similarly applied to
red-light cameras and LI’s short-lived
school zone speed cameras.
“They have to have some protections
there for the data,” Jason Starr, the
former Nassau County chapter director
of the New York Civil Liberties
Union, has said.
Proponents maintain that the goal
of the bus cameras is to help protect
kids, not track drivers. Among
those who testified at the county
legislatures to lobby for passage
of the laws were kids themselves.
But even traveling to the Suffolk
County Legislature to ask for
protections put children at risk
of drivers who ignore school bus
stop signs.
“When we pulled up with our students
at the legislative public hearing,
our kids were starting to get off
the bus when a car whizzed right by
in the parking lot while the school
bus lights were flashing,” a Longwood
School District official told the
legislature last month. “Luckily, the
bus driver, whose antenna was way
up, stopped the kid right away … It’s
an accident waiting to happen too
often.”
Educators say kids and parents don’t
need the extra stress caused by such
a simple task as crossing the street
on their way to or from the school
bus.
“Students face a lot of worries between
school, college acceptances,
sports, studies,” Dawn Sharrock, a
Middle Country Board of Education
vice president, also told the legislature.
“We don’t need to make getting
on and off their school bus daily one
of those worries that they have to
have.”
IN THE NEWS
“I have seen cars zooming past stopped school
buses,” said Tom Cilmi.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
