D
on Carter has seen every generation and variety of video surveillance equipment, since his days as a 16-year-old student bus driver in North Carolina in the 1980s. So, he knows a thing or two about what works, what doesn’t and
when it’s time to move on to something newer, smarter and better. “Te biggest thing is, don’t decide to do nothing, because you
can’t do it all at once. If you have to do it piecemeal, so be it,” said Carter, director of transportation for the School Board of St. Lucie County in Florida. “We are continually upgrading.” Carter has come a long way from his first North Carolina video
“system,” which was comprised of five Sony Super 8 cameras shift- ed among the backward-facing wooden boxes mounted in each of the district’s 300 buses. It amounted to an elaborate shell game to trick students into thinking they were being recorded. VHS tapes were in vogue as he moved to Florida and a driver would be assigned to rotate tapes each day. “If it was Friday, you’d take out that tape and put in the previous
Monday tape. We still changed out tapes every day, but at least we had a few days we could go back and review,” he recalled.
As time passed, the first digital systems were floor-mounted and
prone to dust contamination, but had advanced to a camera in the front and another in the back. Over time, systems advanced to four, six and eight cameras, providing expanded views inside and outside the bus. Port St. Lucie’s newest system is wireless and includes staggered side cameras along the interior to see over high- backed seats to monitor behavior and ensure children are comply- ing with the state’s seat-belt law. “What happens now is we have software we can access from anywhere. If a parent makes a request at 7 a.m., I can instantly put in a request on the web page, go back to what I was doing, and as soon as the bus reaches the compound, it starts downloading what- ever I requested,” Carter described. “You’re not tied up looking for it. We used to be required to go out and touch 400 buses, now I can update software over the air.” Fleet directors and vendors agreed that the advantages of new technology are numerous, including greater enhanced video qual- ity; more video angles; zoom-in capability; savings in staff time; faster resolution of incidents and information requests; system
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF REI
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