Video taken on school buses operated by Winston-Salem/Forsythe County Schools in North Carolina is helping the district uncover and respond to on-board incidents like never before. Above, simultaneous footage from a four-channel system.
T
he images of a brick-sized block of concrete smash- ing through the wind- shield of a Winston-Sa-
lem/Forsyth County Schools bus without warning are as sickening as they are terrifying for transportation professionals and parents. As the veteran driver recoils amid a spray of shattered glass, the deliberately thrown projectile rips through the cabin with violent force. “Te bus was going to school to pick up students. If it had gone through the driver’s side, she would have wrecked the bus on a busy highway,” said M. Darrell Taylor, director of transportation in North Carolina’s fourth-largest school district. “If there had been a child sitting in that second seat, they would have been seriously injured.” Or worse. Te sharp-edged, heavy stone passes at the average elemen- tary school child’s head height at highway speed. Video can’t always produce in the successful resolution of a random act of violence, but it frequently plays an irreplaceable role in managing and investigating incidents on and, increasingly, outside the bus. Te reason is simple: Video typi- cally captures and delivers irrefut- able evidence. “When you work an incident and
there’s not a camera, you’re dealing with he-said, she-said. Tere are two sides of the story and the truth is in there somewhere. It’s not necessar- ily that someone is lying; it’s their perception of what happened,” said Amy Rosa, director of transporta- tion, Wa-Nee Community Schools in Nappanee, Indiana. “Te camera helps me see the bigger picture of what went on.” Forward-facing cameras were not able to lead to arrests in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County bus
incident or another one a few weeks later, but they did help Taylor share the bigger picture with the public. “In one video showing the front of the bus, you can make out two people standing on the side of the road, tossing (the concrete) up, but there was no facial recognition,” he said. We looked at it from all an- gles. So did the police department, but it just wasn’t a good enough angle to tell.”
What the video did do was tell a
story far more vividly than words when Taylor, who oversees 358 buses that log a total of 6 million miles a year, shared it with local media. He tied it into the NASDPTS Annu- al National Stop Arm Violation Count, which occurred two days after the second incident. Five news stations interviewed
Taylor, who talked about the need for drivers to obey stop-arm laws. “It brought a lot more recognition to our drivers, their day-to-day op- erations and what could happen,” Taylor said. “It’s the kind of story that has made the public look more closely at what’s going on with our buses and along the road. We’re hoping that once it was on TV, it will be a deterrent because (potential vandals) know we have video on the buses.” Another recent video could come in handy if needed in court, Taylor acknowledged. It shows a motorist running a stop sign and passing a deployed stop arm before the sound of the car crashing into another vehicle is recorded.
VALUABLE PIECES OF INFORMATION Ed Cassidy, director of transpor- tation at Calvert County Public Schools in Maryland, said he be- lieves the purpose of any surveillance equipment is to “safeguard property,
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS Video management software can trigger auto-
matic video downloads based on certain alarms or events. For example, if a driver hits the panic button or unsafe driving behavior occurs, such as a sharp turn or hard braking, video is marked then auto- matically downloaded and ready for review as soon as the bus returns to the yard, allowing for faster incident responses and immediate insight into what is happening on the road. Lori Jetha, marketing communications manager
for Seon, said school districts should look for soft- ware that is web-based to allow secure access from anywhere, triggers automatic downloads of marked video, and provides a dashboard of video health status to ensure system are always recording. “The key to good video management software is ease of use, instant access to video and vehicle data from anywhere, and the ability to reduce the time between incident report and resolution.” Seon’s vMax Commander displays the GPS tracks
from any bus that travelled through a specific area, and then allows the user to click on a GPS point to schedule a video download. “Map-based search capability can be an essential in video management software to allow transpor- tation teams to easily search for relevant video footage based on a geographic location rather than just date and time,” said company spokeswoman Lori Jetha. Transfinder’s Infofinder mobile and Viewfinder
applications allow school districts to see student trips and stops that are involved in incidents. These can range from onboard bullying and fights to school bus driver behavior, such as hard braking, hard stopping and incorrect vehicle location. Meanwhile, Routefinder Pro attaches student
information to the incident, including the driver, associated video, bus stop information and paper records, such as speeding tickets. “Should there be an incident on the bus, we are
able to capture everyone that’s involved in the incident, take attendance following the incident so we know who was on the bus, who was driving and bus behavior,” said Frank Gazeley, the company’s vice president of client relations.
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