SPECIAL REPORT
for viewing video that involves more staff. “It’s a team effort,” she said. “We contract with Durham, and their seven managers are required to view at least one video daily,” she said. “Some of the viewing decisions come from com- plaints from parents or the general public, school concerns, or the timing of the route. We also have a bus report system in place for anyone to report anonymously. We investigate each and every report.”
Vendor Advice Mike Guzallis, a sales engineer with school bus video provider REI, said decisions on adding video systems to school buses should include the ability of the driver to easily flag an incident via a panic button. For example, REI offers a sensor harness that is tradition- ally tied to the reds or the stop arm that can also be tied to the wheelchair lift to flag video. This, Guzallis added, helps transportation managers ensure their drivers are securing wheelchairs properly. “And with wireless, all of that information, and GPS data, is automatically downloaded. “What can also make life easier for transportation managers is if a parent calls and complains about something at the bus stop, but doesn’t know what time it occurred,” he continued. “The GPS info has all of that. The manager can then simply click on that point and automatically download that section, without having to sift through a half-hour of video.” He said high-definition cameras present their own
challenges. “Everybody is pitching high-definition cameras,”
Guzallis added. “The great thing about them is that they have wider angles that capture more and have six-times better resolution. The flip-side is that they need six- times more storage space.” To combat this, he said REI records on two streams,
one high-definition and one sub-stream. The sub- stream can provide weeks, if not months, worth of video. It can also record ridership trends, such as bullying or abuse, or if something is an isolated incident. Then there is the optimal placement of the equipment
to deal with. “Proper positioning of the cameras is also important with special needs students,” says Drew Batten, a sales manager with REI. “A camera on the outside that shows loading and unloading to verify that the student was handled properly, is something a lot of districts are doing, along with the driver having a camera that shows a 360-degree view around the bus.”
20 School Transportation News • MARCH 2019
Factors for Inspecting the Video Safety Vision advises districts to inspect camera systems at least once a week, de- pending on the system’s age, frequency of incidents on the buses, and if wireless downloads are available or not. Districts with wireless download capability have greatly increased efficiency, instead of re- quiring staff to “pull it when you need it.” Safety Vision wireless downloading
also offers a health status report that can be emailed to whoever might need the information. For districts without wireless, the
panic button is a valuable resource. Not only does it give drivers the ability to mark important events in the video, but it also has eight LED indicator lights that will light up as red if there is a problem with the system, such as no SD card or hard drive in the recorder, or no power, for instance.
Is the Camera Actually Recording? Robert Scott, vice president of sales and marketing for 247 Security, said regular video review checks to make sure the cameras are operating properly also reveal driv- er habits, such as bus checkouts. He agreed that the reality for most districts is they
simply don’t have the time or the personnel for weekly checks of all bus cameras. But having a system like 247’s Touchdown, which automatically sends video to the server at the time the bus is shut down, tells the office how many marked events there are. This greatly reduces the task of video review. The office can also request video clips to be uploaded for certain time periods, and the GPS data will be uploaded as well. “A school bus is a harsh environment for a computer,
but 247 Security’s reputation for reliability stems from a unique system of storing video,” said Scott. “Most districts want to store 30-days of video. Using both DHD (hard drive) and solid-state technology to store informa- tion on the hard drive is efficient.” Scott said another important issue to consider is that solid state drives are prone to file corruption. Any problem requires the drive be reformatted, which erases all data. In addition, “hard drives are susceptible to vibration. By
recording in solid-state and then sending that information to the DHD when the bus is shut down, we eliminate that problem,” Scott reported. “It is also how we can offer a 10-year warranty on the DHD. Hard drives are mechan- ical—they are always spinning—which shortens their life span. But with our system, they only spin a couple minutes at the end of each run, so they last longer.” ●
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