Suffolk should keep but improve its bus camera program

Between 2007 and 2016, more than 100 school kids under the age of 18 were killed in pedestrian crashes involving school buses in the United States.

That’s a statistic worth stopping in its tracks, and Suffolk County is trying. In May 2021, a Virginia company called BusPatrol began installing cameras on the stop-sign arms of Suffolk's school buses, with the initial goal of ticketing drivers who illegally pass stopped buses picking up or dropping off children.

The long-term goal, though, is not to raise revenue but to make us drive more cautiously when we see a yellow school bus. And the steep fines, starting with $250 for a first offense, are starting to do so.

In 2022, significantly fewer tickets were issued than in 2021, the first school year of the program. In November, for instance, citations dropped 46% from the 17,276 issued in that month the previous year, with similar declines in October and December.

In the first full year of the program, 118,929 tickets were issued, generating nearly $25 million in revenue, with 45% going to BusPatrol and the rest to the county. BusPatrol, which paid the upfront cost of installing the cameras and building a center to process them, has invested over $25 million in the program.

A number of drivers who received tickets are furious. Some, having reviewed the video of their violation, say the stop-sign arm was not fully extended. Others argue the bus was across a roadway so wide that they should not have been expected to stop. And a portion of those who feel they were ticketed unfairly say they lost the chance to appeal because they never received the first violation notice; they say the first they knew of the ticket was a second notice with a $25 late fee but no chance to fight the charge.

County officials say they don’t believe there is a significant pattern of first notices not being mailed. They also eliminated from the program some areas where issuing violations does not make sense. Those efforts need to be redoubled, because safety must not be used as camouflage for a cash grab. And every motorist is entitled to due process.

But if Suffolk’s drivers learn their lesson, as motorists have in areas where similar programs have been in place for years such as Cobb County, Georgia, ticket numbers should steadily decline.

And as that evolves, the focus should shift to finding ways cameras can help nab reckless drivers on our highways who speed and shift lanes as if playing a video game. That's another danger on our roads that must be stopped.