Local officials: Law breakers putting students who ride school buses at risk

The New York State law that prohibits drivers from passing stopped school buses may not protect students as well as you’d think.

That’s because too many drivers illegally pass stopped school buses with flashing red lights and an extended stop sign arm, endangering students getting on or off the bus, local officials said at a press conference late last week at Whitesboro Middle School.

Cameras on school buses in eight Oneida County districts caught 862 vehicles passing stopped buses during the 2023-2024 school year, the first full year with the cameras in place, Oneida County Sheriff Rob Maciol said.

The cameras take photos of the license plate of the passing vehicle.

“I never thought we’d see almost 1,000 passes in one school year,” Maciol said.

New school year brings new focus to school bus safety

Every school day, 23 million New York kids ride on school buses. And they are about 70 times more likely to get to school safety than those who go to school in a car, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But, an estimated 50,000 vehicles illegally pass school buses in New York every day, putting students at risk, according to the New York Association for Pupil Transportation.

Assemblywoman Marianne Buttenschon, D-Marcy, who organized the press conference, urged drivers to leave 20 minutes early once the new school year starts next week so they have time to stop and wait for stopped buses.

A new school year means new bus routes with different stops, new bus drives and new students riding buses for the first time.

And that calls for extra caution, Buttenschon said.

“We want you to give yourself the extra time so there’s no rushing,” she said. “There’s no reason to be passing a school bus.”

Oneida County District Attorney Todd Carville also warned the public of the dangers of worrying about hurrying while driving.

“The three to five seconds you might save by passing a school bus,” he said. “is not worth the life you might take.”

Oneida County is working to get cameras on buses in all districts

Participating districts in the camera program in Oneida County include Holland Patent, New Hartford, New York Mills, Rome, Sauquoit Valley, Waterville, Westmoreland and Whitesboro.

But the county is working with the camera vendor to get cameras on the buses in the five remaining eligible districts in the county, Maciol said.

The Utica City School District is not eligible for the county program; the city would have to start its own program.

A state law passed in 2019 allows counties and small cities to set up these programs. Oneida County’s agreement is with Verra Mobility, which pays to place cameras on school buses and to maintain those cameras.

Neither the county nor the school districts have to pay to participate.

Instead, the registered owner of any car whose license plate is caught by the camera as it illegally passes a bus gets hit with a civil fine. And 40% of those fines go to the company to cover the cost of placing and maintaining the cameras, Maciol said.

The other 60% goes into the county’s general fund, he said.

What is the penalty for illegally passing a stopped school bus?

Because the cameras cannot prove who was driving a vehicle, the registered owner of the vehicle that passed the bus gets fined: $250 for a first offense, $275 for a second within 18 months and $300 for a third.

The state may also suspend the owner’s registration after three violations within three years, Maciol said.

Legislation has passed in New York that would raise the highest fine to a maximum of $1,500, but it has not yet been signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Buttenschon pointed out.

These fines do not add points to anyone’s driving record, though.

However, drivers who can be proven to have passed a school bus — either because they were witnessed by a law enforcement officer or identified after investigation — can be ticketed for a moving violation, which does put points on their licenses.

These violations carry fines of $250 to $400 (and/or up to 30 days in prison) for the first offense, $600 to $700 (and/or up to 180 days in prison) for the second within three years and $750 to $1,000 (and/or 180 days in prison) for the third within three years.

These drivers also risk up to five points on their licenses.

But his office probably issues less than a dozen of these moving violations a year, Maciol said.

'They just don't have any patience'

Oneida County Deputy Mohammad Aldoori reviews the school bus camera tapes to check that a vehicle really did pass a stopped school bus. He sees some egregious cases, he said, including a recent one in which a driver doesn’t even slow down as he passes a child who appears to be about 10 years old on a straight roadway on which the stopped bus is clearly visible.

The data from the cameras will allow analysis to see if there are any locations or other conditions more prone to violations, Maciol said. That has not happened yet.

So far, law enforcement officers have noticed only one thing that many of the offending drivers have in common, Maciol said.

“They just don’t,” he said, “have any patience.”

School district officials frequently hear complaints about how people drive near school buses, said Whitesboro Superintendent Brian Bellair and Transportation Supervisor Andrew Kirk. People don’t let these things go because the stakes are high, Kirk said.

“You’ve got your children standing out there at the bus stop and you see someone flying by, you call the sheriff,” he said.

Whitesboro incidents

Because Whitesboro runs by far the most buses of any district with bus cameras in the county, the greatest number of fines have been levied for incidents in Whitesboro — 285, Maciol said.

The issue isn’t just the 52 buses Whitesboro has on the roads, but the huge number of stops they make, with many stops made for individual households, Bellair said.

“Every stop is a potential pass,” he said.

Many people expect the biggest problem to be on the busy Oriskany Boulevard, he said. But there are no bus stops on Oriskany.

Oneida County has not had any accidents in recent years in which a student was hit by a passing vehicle.

One of the most egregious recent violations happened in Deerfield in ___ when a car tried to hurry past a bus with flashing yellow lights that was getting ready to stop, Kirk said. So the driver tried to pass on the left, but couldn’t. So instead the driver passed on the right where students get on and off the bus, he said.

But the car ended up crashing into a guardrail.

More: Why not us? School bus camera law excludes Utica

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Deaths

A 2017 report by the State University of New York and the New York State Education Department’s Pupil Transportation Services found that 112 New York students died from 1960 through June of 2016 while riding in, entering or exiting a school bus. Five more students died while riding charter buses for school trips.

Of those, 28 students were killed outside the bus by a passing motorist and 58 were killed off the bus by their own bus, according to the report. Another 14 died in collisions.

Children in kindergarten and first, second or third grades were the most likely to die, accounting for 77 of the deaths.

When cars hit students getting on or off a bus, it’s usually because the driver doesn’t stop, tries to pass the bus because the driver doesn’t have time to wait, doesn’t see the flashing lights due to weather or dirty lights, or gets waved by by the school bus driver who doesn’t realize a student is still in the road, according to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.

What to do when approaching a school bus that is stopped or stopping

Here’s the proper etiquette for drivers who come across school buses taking students to or from school:

• Buses with yellow flashing lights are preparing to stop. Other drivers should slow down and be prepared to stop, according to the DMV

• When a bus has flashing red lights and an extended stop sign arm, all vehicles on both sides of the road must stop, according to the law. This includes vehicles in all lanes and traffic in both directions on a divided highway. The law also applies to parking lots and private drives.

• Drivers may not continue until the school bus moves, or until the bus driver or a law enforcement officers signals that they may go.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Buttenschon, Maciol, discuss school bus cameras, passing stopped buses