its side. Two other students and the bus driver suffered serious injuries. Houston ISD officials are not discussing the incident, which is still in litigation. However, a subsequent report compiled by the Nation- al Transportation Safety Board, determined that the bus, which was traveling at 55 mph, was struck on the left side by a car that was traveling about 69 mph. According to the re- port, the force of the collision caused the bus driver to lose control. Tis was determined after investigators reviewed the video from an externally mounted bus camera on the left side of the bus. Te camera captured an image of the car leaving its lane just before impacting the bus. According to NTSB, the speeds of the school bus and the car were determined after analyzing the video from the school bus camera.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Industry experts said camera location is just as important as picture quality. Cameras should be config- ured to cover the most real estate possible, internally and externally. School districts should assess their current and future needs when select- ing a camera system. In many cases, a hybrid system comprising analog and HD cameras is recommended to save money and still be effective. Lori Jetha, director of marketing
for Seon, suggested that camera selection depends on what you want to see. She said there are two reasons to have an IP camera. “Te first is outside the bus to capture a license plate,” she added. “We recommend at least one HD camera outside the bus. Te second is if you want to zoom in on an area. If you have an analog camera and try to zoom in the image gets pixilated, breaks up and the image gets grainier and grainier.” She said there is not as much of a need for an IP camera inside the bus because the bus drivers should already know the students. She said the four-channel system is the most
popular selection, but school districts should buy a system with more chan- nels than they are currently using in case they want to add more cameras later. Cameras, Jetha said, are far less expensive than DVRs. Clint Bryer, an account executive
for Safety Vision, said placing an IP on the dash facing the road will serve multiple purposes in case of an acci- dent. He said dash cameras have the ability to capture a license plate and can monitor road conditions, weather and traffic flow. “You can tell if a stop light was red or green, see children, potholes and rain-soaked roads,” Bryer said. “For greater distance views you have zoom capability.” Bryer said another camera place- ment is to the left of the driver captur- ing the driver and the stairwell. “From there you can monitor students getting on and off the bus and driver-parent interaction,” he said. “A third good placement for an IP camera is the stop arm because you want to capture the license plate of violators.”
QUALITY VS. QUANTITY Another decision school districts must make when shopping for HD or IP systems is memory capacity. REI’s Routh said one IP camera pulls as much data as eight analog cameras. “Te higher the resolution the more information that needs to go to the DVR and is recorded on the hard drive,” Routh said. “With that in mind, if people want to adopt the use of multiple IP cameras or true HD cameras, it will eat into the amount of recording time. People need to perk up their ears to that. It would limit the time the cameras are record- ing to the hard drive. Schools would need to get bigger hard drives to have more memory.” Routh said school districts should meet with their technology part- ners and discuss how to balance the amount of recording time they expect and need with the various camera views they would like. “As long as school districts are clear on that, they can make smarter buy-
52 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2016
ing decisions,” Routh said. “Te only reason you put cameras on a bus is so you can view the important events. If you need to review an incident that is no longer there because it’s been overwritten, then what’s the point of the system?” 247’s Scott suggested that many people do not fully understand what HD really means. He said the sharper picture people see on their HDTV is a product of denser pixilation in the frame. “Tere’s a trade-off there,” he said. “Te video is a computer file that stores data, and there’s more data per frame in an HD frame picture than in a regular digital frame. So storage becomes an issue. If a district wants to store 30 days of video it will need twice the storage (space).”
CAVEAT EMPTOR: LET THE BUYER BEWARE
Industry experts cautioned school districts to do their homework when looking to upgrade their camera systems. Tat means school districts should not buy the new technology just because it’s there, but assess their needs against what is available and ask the right questions. To address the storage issue, Scott said some salesmen will recommend a district record at a lower frame rate than the standard 15 to 20 frames per second. But, he said, this results in a poorer quality video with a “jerky” motion. “Make sure you understand what
you’re buying, the capacity you need at the frame rate you need,” Scott said. “It’s another buyer beware situa- tion. You can capture a crisper picture of a license plate with an HD camera, but there is more to it than just HD. You have to dig into the quality of the product you’re buying.” Scott advised that if a salesman suggests moving to an HD system, ask why you might need it. “Ten make sure you get a good answer that fits your needs,” he said. “Tere is no com- promise, so do your homework.” l
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