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Overcast Parents Welcome Glen Cove's Bus Stop-Arm Camera Program for Added Safety
There’s plenty for parents to worry about when their children head to school in the morning, from getting the most out of their classes to what they’re eating for lunch. They shouldn’t have to fret over school bus safety, too.
Starting mid November Glen Cove will initiate a warning period for the city school district’s bus stop-arm-camera program, created to protect children from motorists illegally passing stopped school buses. Beginning in mid-December, motorists who pass stopped buses with their red lights blinking and their stop arms deployed — from either direction — will be issued a summons and a $250 fine for the first offense, increasing to $275 for a second offense and $300 for a third.
The city and the school district partnered with BusPatrol, a Virginia-based school bus safety company, to install seven WiFi-enabled cameras on all buses, which will capture video of vehicles whose drivers break the law. There will be seven cameras per bus. One camera is mounted on a bus’s windshield, two more are positioned on either side, and four cameras monitor its interior and passengers.
State law prohibits drivers from passing school buses with their stop arms extended — even if the motorist is headed in the opposite direction and is separated from the stopped bus by a divider.
Some parents, such as Sara Dorfman-Masone, a mother of three children in the district, say the law doesn’t deter bad driving. “I can’t emphasize how many times I’ve had to call the bus department, letting them know of unsafe conditions that are happening around bus departure and arrival home,” Dorfman-Masone a parent in the school district said at a Nov 2 news conference at Glen Cove City Hall. “There’s so many devices out in this world today that some drivers are not paying attention, and when we have our stop signs up cars are driving right by it. It’s very unsafe for our children.”
Jason Elan, the company’s head of external affairs, said that BusPatrol, which has equipped some 7,000 buses across the state with cameras, has documented a nearly 40 percent reduction in stopped-bus infractions in Suffolk County, where [//HOW MANY?//] school districts use the cameras. He added that violation statistics are sent to local governments so they can see when and where infractions are occurring.
“What we’re trying to do is not simply just enforce the law — we’re trying to change driver behavior,” Elan said at the news conference. “This is a big yellow school bus; it’s large by design. We’re not asking much. We’re asking for people to slow down and stop for the bus, and the technology that we’re introducing to modernize these buses we think (of) as a way to help achieve that goal.”
BusPatrol has developed an artificial intelligence system called automated violation analysis. When it detects a violation, Elan explained, global positioning and other data are sent to BusPatrol’s processing center, and then AVA filters footage to enable human reviewers to conduct quality-assurance checks, compile video, and send an evidence package to law enforcement to affirm or deny a violation. If it is affirmed, a citation is generated and mailed to the offender with a web link to give them access to the video evidence of their violation.
“What’s very unique about AVA is that she’s only getting smarter as (she) … captures more violations,” Elan said. “She gets smarter, so to speak. Right now she’s 11 times smarter than the human eye.”
The Glen Cove Board of Education discussed the program with City Councilwoman Danielle Fugazy Scagliola in 2021. A mother of four children in the district, she said she was happy that the program has begun.
“We want to have compliance,” Fugazy Scagliola said, “and we want to just make sure that we are always looking for ways to keep our children safe.”
