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oo often, tragedy begets innovation. That was the case in Indiana, after a multiple fatality involving three stu- dents in a nearby district became the


major driving factor in South Bend Commu- nity School Corporation piloting new video technology in 2019. At the same time, district officials noted that they could also address a problem of motorists driving past stopped buses with stop arms extended. The incident at the nearby district, which


occurred when a motorist failed to notice a stopped school bus on a rural state road and struck four students, three of which died at the scene with the fourth hospitalized, helped push the school board to move forward past simply piloting stop-arm cameras to installing the technology from 247Security on all buses, in- cluding contract buses, shared Greg Dettinger, South Bend’s assistant transportation director. “We have a process whereby we forward


violators to the police,” he added. “Our IT per- son has been called into court several times to testify about the camera and how he pulls the footage. He was called in so often, they took an affidavit from him that they now use so he doesn’t have to go. “One of the great[est] benefits has been to help solve hit and runs on our buses as well as the police having called upon us to solve some crimes we caught via the cameras such as home burglaries.” Dettinger shared that it has been “signifi-


cantly” beneficial to have the cameras on the outside of the buses, not only to document accidents involving the school buses but also to show a fight involving students at the bus stop. “Because of the fatalities in the nearby


district, we don’t even make non-door-side stops on any highly traveled roads, including in some neighborhoods,” he said, adding that the district has seen an 11-percent decrease in ridership from a year ago because of COVID-19. “We have numerous roads built into our routing system that won’t let you route a student from across the street, forcing


us to make it a door-side stop.” A spokesman for the National Motorist


Association, an outspoken critic of stop-arm enforcement programs, said that ending student crossing altogether makes more sense than legislating cameras that are percieved as merely a money grab for school districts and their vendors. Meanwhile, Carroll County Public Schools


officials in Maryland were concerned about the results of an annual survey performed in conjunction with the State Department of Ed- ucation indicating the number of incidents of motorists passing school buses with red lights flashing and the stop arm extended. “It’s a significant problem,” noted Trans-


portation Director Mike Hardesty. “We were interested in any program that would lead to the reduction in fly-by incidents. We looked at additional technologies that we were, for a long time, trying to implement in our sys- tem—GPS and enhanced communication capability.” Hardesty said that the district’s use of cell


phones over the years had become inefficient and doesn’t offer the means to provide emer- gency notification across the fleet. In 2020, the school district entered into a


five-year agreement with Bus Patrol. “The revenue created by the fly-by cameras enabled us to acquire Zonar GPS services in addition to FirstNet Push-to-Talk communica- tion devices on every one of our school buses, including our spare bus fleet,” said Hardesty. “We felt those two technologies were extremely important to safe daily operations here.” The Bus Patrol program is managed by the


Carroll County Sheriff’s Department’s patrol ticketing operation. Any revenue, a term that makes critics bristle, after paying the technol- ogy fees go to law enforcement. To date, there has been no excess revenue,


as fewer buses have run due to pandem- ic-related transportation modifications. But the technology has demonstrated success in terms of catching motorists flying by bus- es, Hardesty said, adding that video footage


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