Orange County recently signed a five-year contract with a Long Island-based firm to install cameras on school buses, enabling automated fines for stop-arm violations by motorists.
Washingtonville Central School District, the first school district in the county to sign up for the new program, will formally introduce it in early June, to be followed by three more districts in Newburgh, Middletown, and Kiryas Joel.
Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus said he encouraged more schools to opt into the program, which enhances student safety at zero cost to the districts.
“All the revenues that it takes to run this program are from the $250 fines that are imposed on people that are caught on camera passing school buses,” Mr. Neuhaus said at a press conference at Washingtonville High School on May 6. “This is a real no-brainer for us.”
He added that he first heard about the technology five years ago at a statewide conference from his counterpart in Suffolk County and was pleased that the county’s emergency services department heads had finally implemented it to benefit residents.
According to the opt-in agreement with the Washingtonville District, Orange County—not the school district—is solely responsible for paying BusPatrol for the installation, maintenance, and use of the automated system, the costs of which are to be covered solely by violation fines.
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Combining the four above-mentioned school districts, a total of 600 school buses are in line to be equipped with the automated enforcement system.
Each equipped bus has six or so exterior cameras that are activated by stop arms and capture 360-degree views around the bus in video form, which will be analyzed by artificial intelligence-powered software for potential violations.
Any flagged cases will go through three layers of human reviews before being sent to governmental enforcement agencies.
Captured video footage will be stored on physical devices inside buses for about a month, according to Justin Meyers, BusPatrol’s president and chief innovation officer.
“[The purpose of the press conference is to] notify drivers that these buses in these communities are now equipped with the system,” he said at the press conference. “You see that big yellow school bus? Hey, that means I need to drive a little bit more cautiously.”
BusPatrol currently works with about 300 communities in the country and more than a hundred school districts in New York state, Meyers said.
New York state lawmakers enabled local governments to enforce stop-arm violations by automated means when they amended the state’s “Vehicle and Traffic Law” in 2019.
