70% of Suffolk BusPatrol camera tickets issued on streets children don't cross

Barbara Lorge was heading to Deer Park for a manicure, like she does every two weeks.

After leaving her Dix Hills home, Lorge, now 78, turned right onto Deer Park Avenue, a divided highway of two traffic lanes on either side of a median, with driveways and side streets branching off.

Across the grassy chasm that morning in September 2022, Lorge saw a school bus stopped for a pickup. Cars behind the bus waited for students to board. Across the street, traffic continued moving and Lorge believed she couldn’t stop safely.

More than a month later, Lorge opened her mailbox to find a citation. She’d been spotted by one of the cameras mounted on school buses across Suffolk County in recent years to catch drivers who don’t abide the bus’ stop-arm and flashing red lights. Lorge is one of thousands of drivers to be ticketed on Deer Park Avenue in Dix Hills since the program launched in 2021.

But students there — and at many other high-ticket areas of Suffolk — do not cross the street when getting on or off the school bus. In fact, more than 70% of the school bus camera tickets from 2023 were issued on streets that students do not cross, an exclusive Newsday investigation found, raising questions about whether the bus camera program is primarily about student safety or producing money for the county.

At $250 each, the roughly 60,000 tickets issued last year on streets students don’t cross are worth around $15 million for Suffolk’s bus camera program, which collected around $45 million in ticket revenue in 2022 and 2023, according to the county's annual reports for those years.

"This is a money grab," Lorge said. "This doesn’t make any logical sense. You are asking people to stop their cars and put their lives in danger, so that a kid four lanes away can get on the bus next to his driveway."

Some of the other high-ticket Suffolk locations include Middle Country Road in Coram, which had at least 864 tickets last year; on Route 112 in Patchogue, at least 721 tickets; and on Montauk Highway in Lindenhurst, at least 608 tickets. In those areas, kids do not cross the street when getting on or off the school bus, school district officials said.

New York state law requires drivers to stop for school buses, even on divided highways where students don't cross to get on or off the bus. According to a bill sponsored by State Sen. Steven Rhodes (R-Bellmore) to change the law, New York is the only state that requires drivers on the other side of a multilane roadway divided by a median to stop for a stopped school bus. 

Drivers who get cited are offered a chance to plead their case in court, but many, like Lorge, opt to pay the fine. In 2023, more than 75% of ticketed drivers in Suffolk paid their fine without contesting it, according to county data.

"What is this program trying to accomplish?" Legis. Steven Englebright (D-East Setauket) said. "Is it trying to save lives and prevent accidents or is it trying to have a game of 'gotcha' in order to raise revenues?

"I’ve come to the conclusion that this program really needs an overhaul."

To understand where students cross the street when getting on or off the school bus, Newsday sent Freedom of Information Law requests to 69 Suffolk public school districts. Through information provided by 54 responsive districts, Newsday was able to analyze more than 80,000 school bus camera tickets, more than three-quarters of all citations Suffolk issued last year.

"The law, for safety’s sake, has to make sense," Lorge said. "If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not a good law."

This doesn’t make any logical sense. You are asking people to stop their cars and put their lives in danger, so that a kid four lanes away can get on the bus next to his driveway.

— Barbara Lorge, Dix Hills

Credit: Newsday / Steve Pfost

The New York State Legislature passed a law in 2019 allowing local governments to adopt school bus camera programs, giving extra teeth to the decades-old state law requiring all drivers to stop for school buses.

Suffolk County launched its bus camera program in 2021, contracting with Virginia-based BusPatrol America to install the cameras and manage the program.

Suffolk remains the largest BusPatrol program in the country, but other Long Island municipalities also have signed up, including the Town of Hempstead, Glen Cove, Long Beach, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay. New York City recently expanded a pilot program with BusPatrol, though the company does not yet have a contract with the city.

Newsday requested the same information used in this investigation from three dozen Town of Hempstead school districts, but not enough of them were able to provide information on their no-cross streets to offer a comprehensive picture of that program.

Both the bus camera programs in Suffolk and the Town of Hempstead have drawn lawsuits, along with a federal suit filed against BusPatrol. All three lawsuits are seeking class-action status and claim myriad problems with the programs.

But both Suffolk officials and BusPatrol say they are simply following the law in citing drivers for passing school buses.

"The parameters governing New York State’s bus camera laws would necessitate an act of the New York State Legislature to make any changes, and Suffolk’s program must adhere to these guidelines," county spokesman Michael Martino said.

BusPatrol spokesman Gary Lewi said it's the county, rather than the company, that decides which drivers get citations.

"We are providing Suffolk County with the video of violations as defined by state law," Lewi said. "How the county proceeds with that evidence is up to the county."

We are providing Suffolk County with the video of violations as defined by state law. How the county proceeds with that evidence is up to the county.

— Gary Lewi, BusPatrol spokesman

The sheer volume of citations issued indicates drivers passing school buses remains a problem in Suffolk. Between September 2021 and the end of 2023, Suffolk issued 285,147 citations, according to Suffolk’s annual reports on the program.

Bus cameras have proved lucrative for both Suffolk and for BusPatrol. In 2022 and 2023, the first two full years the bus cameras were in operation, Suffolk’s program generated around $45 million in fines from drivers. BusPatrol’s contract with the county allocates 45% of the revenue to the company, meaning BusPatrol made more than $20 million combined from Suffolk tickets in 2022 and 2023.

BusPatrol says that as the programs age and drivers get used to the idea that they will be ticketed for passing a bus, citations fall, a claim that Suffolk’s data supports.

When the program started in 2021, BusPatrol was recording 15,670 violations each month, according to county data. In 2022, monthly violations were down to 9,911. By last year, they had fallen to 8,627 per month.

Bus camera tickets issued where students don’t cross the street

Roughly 60,000 school bus camera tickets were issued in Suffolk County in 2023 at stops where students don't cross the street, according to a Newsday analysis of data provided by the county.

Click a point for more information or use the magnifying glass to search tickets issued by ZIP code.

Note: Expected ticket revenue is based on the minimum fine of $250 per ticket. Repeat offenders are fined more.

Illegal passing

In May, nearly 900 New York State bus drivers participated in an annual survey measuring how often motorists illegally pass stopped school buses. They recorded nearly 2,000 illegal passes in a single day, according to the 2024 survey from the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services.

Between late March and the end of May, 34 other states and Washington, D.C., also conducted single-day surveys, and bus drivers witnessed more than 66,000 illegal passes. Extrapolating that data, the organization projected there were more than 45.2 million violations across the 180-day school year, up from the 43.5 million projected violations the previous year.

"The illegal passing of stopped school buses continues to be the greatest safety danger to children," said Mike Stier, the organization’s president, in a statement issued when the survey was released earlier this year. “[We] hope the results of this survey remind all motorists to pay attention to the yellow school bus, to follow the laws in their state, and stop to allow for the safe loading and unloading of each school bus, and do their part for the safety of our children."

Mindful of the number of motorists who illegally pass school buses, government officials for decades have discouraged school districts from requiring students to cross the street when boarding the bus.

In 1989, the Transportation Research Board published a report suggesting school officials choose bus stops that minimize students crossing in front of the bus. Three years later, New York state released guidelines that stated, "Crossing the road is the most hazardous aspect of riding a school bus and it should be eliminated wherever possible."

It’s since become accepted practice that students do not cross major roadways when boarding the bus.

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen a school district have children cross multiple lanes of traffic" to get on the bus, said Kathy Furneaux, training and consultations manager at the Pupil Transportation Safety Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that trains school bus drivers.

Despite the prevalence of illegal school bus passes, the threat to children is murky.

Between 2013 and 2022, pedestrians killed in school transportation-related crashes were more than twice as likely to be hit by a school bus than by another vehicle, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Over that 10-year period, 169 pedestrians were killed across the country in school transportation-related incidents; 120 were struck by a school vehicle and 49 were hit by another vehicle. Of the pedestrians killed, 76 were school-age children. 

"Most of these are Mickey Mouse violations," said Jay Beeber, executive director of policy at the National Motorists Association, referring to citations issued through school bus camera programs. "They want to characterize these as people putting kids in danger, but most often they’re not.

"Most of the school bus camera violations are not safety violations, they’re technical violations. The laws of passing a school bus are confusing and oftentimes they’re just not necessary for safety."

That’s not to say children in Suffolk County face no risk at the bus stop.

A 12-year-old boy was hit by a car in November 2021 on Grand Boulevard in Brentwood after getting off the school bus, though he did not suffer serious injuries, according to previous Newsday coverage. 

Last December, a 13-year-old girl was struck by a car on Montauk Highway in Eastport after she walked into the road as her bus approached. The girl was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and taken to a hospital. Authorities later said the bus was supposed to pick the child up on the same side of the street and that it was unclear why she attempted to cross the road. The driver who struck the girl was not suspected of wrongdoing, police said at the time.

The BusPatrol cameras in Suffolk also have captured other collisions. In Suffolk’s 2022 annual report on the program, the county found five rear-end crashes related to drivers stopping for school buses, including three involving cars on the opposite side of the street from the bus. Suffolk’s 2023 annual report did not note any crashes, either involving children or drivers around buses.

‘Taxation by citation’

Since Suffolk launched its program, drivers have complained about being ticketed, particularly opposite the school bus on multilane roads, where they say it can be difficult to see a stopped bus or they don’t feel they can safely stop with traffic approaching behind them.

The county comptroller’s office recognized some of these concerns in an audit of the program, published in June.

"The high-citation bus stops were generally located on major roadways in nonresidential areas with motorists traveling at a significant rate of speed in moderate to heavy traffic," the report says, adding the auditors did not witness students crossing the street at these locations.

To address this, the report suggests the county work with BusPatrol to add signage on the high-citation roadways reminding drivers to stop for school buses.

Newsday obtained an earlier draft of the audit report, which also recommended the county ask BusPatrol not to record violations against drivers on the other side of major roads. The document was included in the exhibits as part of the lawsuit against Suffolk's bus camera program.

Despite this suggestion in the draft — and even though there are some major Suffolk roads where BusPatrol doesn’t record violations on the opposite side — the recommendation for fewer tickets issued to drivers opposite the school bus on busy, multilane roads did not make it into the final audit report. Newsday previously reported that drivers were not being ticketed on certain sections of several major roads in the county, including Sunrise Highway, Veterans Memorial Highway and Route 110.

Suffolk Comptroller John M. Kennedy Jr. said in a recent interview that he couldn't recall why some suggestions made in the draft were left out of the county's final audit report, but questioned the extensive ticketing of drivers on streets students don't cross.

"If all we’re getting is people getting dinged where a student was never crossing, then you have to question the fundamental premise of the program," Kennedy said.

Some Suffolk legislators have also recognized a need to reform the camera program.

Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey suggested in a June 2023 public hearing that BusPatrol should use "geo-fencing" technology to avoid ticketing drivers on divided highways where kids don’t cross the street.

Geo-fencing would place a limit on the range of BusPatrol's system to capture drivers in certain locations or circumstances, like on the other side of a divided highway where students don't cross, for example.

Legis. Rob Trotta, (R-Fort Salonga), who initially supported the bus camera program but has since attempted to repeal it, has been more critical.

"It’s a scam," Trotta said. "It’s a money grab and they’re playing with people’s emotions saying it’s about safety.

"It’s taxation by citation. Where a kid isn’t crossing the street, tickets shouldn’t be issued."

But state law means that drivers who pass a stopped school bus in New York, no matter how many lanes away, regardless of the presence of a median or other barrier, are committing a violation.

However, some school bus safety advocates have indicated they’d be open to the possibility of amending the law.

Dave Christopher, executive director of the New York Association for Pupil Transportation (NYAPT), said he believes Suffolk’s bus camera program, and others like it, are needed to keep kids safe. But he also acknowledges that citing drivers regardless of circumstance may not always make sense.

"The stop on a four-lane highway is confusing for people," Christopher said. "I know people don’t understand that. People who do stop are in fear of getting hit by motorists who do not know the law, and I get that.

"Maybe that’s something that needs to be looked at going forward in legislation in trying to address that concern."

Christopher said NYAPT is drafting language that could tweak state law and potentially eliminate some violations for drivers opposite a school bus on a major road.

After more than three years and hundreds of thousands of tickets, Christopher appears to be correct that drivers still don’t understand what’s required of them when a bus stops on the opposite side of a major multilane road.

On a recent chilly afternoon, a northbound school bus stopped on Deer Park Avenue to drop off a student, close to the same location Lorge was cited in 2022.

Traffic behind the school bus stopped when the red lights activated. The student stepped off the bus onto the curb and walked up a driveway.

On the other side of the highway, several cars continued moving without even tapping their brakes. Only one driver attempted to stop.