School bus stop arm pilot reveals extent of violations

A school bus stop arm pilot programme undertaken in Volusia County in Florida has revealed the level of drivers illegally passing stopped school buses when the stop arm is extended and children are boarding or disembarking. During a 29 day pilot period, cameras on just one of the county's 229 buses captured a total of 71 violations. The pilot results also showed that eight out of every 10 violations occurred between 1:00pm and 3:00pm with 67 per cent of the violations occurring on either Tuesday or Wednesday of each week. Under the pilot agreement, events were captured, but drivers were not prosecuted.

"Our goal was to measure how many drivers disregard stopped school buses with the stop arm extended and illegally pass them," said Greg Akin, director of transportation for Volusia County School District." Keeping our children safe is our number one priority and we want to change driver behavior in a positive way to protect the lives of the children who ride a school bus to and from school every day."

17 American Traffic Solutions provided Volusia County School District with its CrossingGuard camera technology to help monitor the extent of the problem. Designed to monitor and enforce traffic around a stopped school bus, CrossingGuard is powered by 5876 AngelTrax's IntelliGuard cameras mounted on the driver's side of the school bus. When the school bus extends its stop arm, the system automatically detects if a vehicle passes the stopped school bus within the enforced zone.  High-quality violation images of a vehicle's license plate and a video that captures the entire violation event provide law enforcement the evidence they need to effectively prosecute these violations.

The Volusia School District is one of six statewide participating in this pilot programme.