Starting next month, if you pass a Scotia-Glenville School District bus illegally, expect to get a ticket in the mail.
All 30 school buses in the Scotia-Glenville School District’s fleet have been fitted with cameras that capture drivers illegally passing. It’s part of the Town of Glenville’s School Bus Safety Program, and a growing trend on Capital Region roadways.
The stop-arm cameras were installed by a company called BusPatrol.
It installs the cameras for free but collects a portion of the funds generated from resulting tickets.
In this case, BusPatrol will receive 60 percent of the revenue generated through tickets while the Town of Glenville will receive 40.
The penalty for a first-time violation is $250 and will be issued to the registered owner of the vehicle through the mail.
Acting Glenville Town Supervisor Robert Kirkham Jr. says the program is about enhancing public safety.
“I know a lot of times when we do things and there are fines attached, people instantly think that this is a huge money grab. We will not receive hardly any funds from any of the fines,” he said.
Speaking by phone, BusPatrol Senior Vice President Ryan Monell says the cameras use AI to filter out false positives before the footage is reviewed by BusPatrol employees.
“It goes through three rounds of human review at BusPatrol to make sure that two things happen. Number one there is quality brought into the process to make sure everything that is coming off of the bus goes through a quality assurance review as well and then secondly for every program that we operate as a vendor for in New York state we actually work with the local law enforcement to make sure that the program reflects what the community wants to see,” she said.
Then the footage is reviewed by BusPatrol employees before being sent to local law enforcement for further review.
Footage captured from Scotia-Glenville school buses will be reviewed by the Glenville Police Department.
Police Chief Stephen Janik says the department has the final say in whether a citation should be issued.
“Once they find a violation, they send that violation through a secure link to the police department. A supervisor on every shift, we have three supervisors. So, every shift. Days, afternoons, midnights, will review the information that comes from BusPatrol and just click whether or not that it’s confirmed. We can deny and we can confirm,” he said.
He welcomes the bus upgrades. He says it can be difficult to enforce existing law without the cameras.
“This is just giving us eyes on the street. From time to time we range from having two to four to maybe five officers on the street at one time. We can’t monitor all the bus stops,” he said.
At a press conference in Scotia, the district’s transportation director Clara Bisaillon said Route 5 and Route 50 have the highest number of violations.
Bisaillon says the district’s drivers are excited for the program to begin.
“It’s frustrating to see it on a daily basis some of our drivers have multiple vehicles run their reds – again on a daily basis. They are in full support and are extremely excited that there is going to be some penalties that will bring more attention to the problem and try to solve the problem by educating what the responsibility of the drivers are,” she said.
BusPatrol has also installed cameras on buses for school districts in Albany County and Rensselaer County.
Since the cameras have already been installed, violators will receive a warning letter in the mail until May 1st.
