North Hempstead Town may add cameras to school buses to enhance student safety

North Hempstead officials are seeking to create a program to enhance school bus safety in the town that could include cameras to capture drivers who don’t stop and educational tools for students. 

A public hearing will be held at a June 16 board meeting to discuss opting into New York State Law section 1174-A, which gives local municipalities the authorization to adopt a program that imposes “monetary liability” on drivers who fail to stop for school buses. 

Supervisor Jennifer DeSena said opting into the state law is the “first step” in the process to enhance bus safety for students.

“As a mother I’m very in touch with the community, and I know that parents are concerned and I expect that there will be support from school districts,” DeSena said. “The public needs to be aware of the risk of tragedies that could happen from carelessly speeding around a bus.”

The cost and further details related to the program are not yet available, DeSena said. If the law is implemented, the town will issue a request for proposals for interested vendors to develop the school bus camera program and other education components. 

Nassau County launched a similar program this year with five school districts — East Rockaway, Elmont, Herricks, Jericho and Long Beach — opting in, according to Nassau spokesperson Christopher Boyle. 

Councilman Robert Troiano, who is president of the Westbury School Board, has championed the initiative. Along with cameras, he said he wants to provide educational videos and tools to teach children how to safely cross a street after getting off the bus. Additionally, he said informing drivers about the effects of illegally passing a school bus can make a difference. 

He noted that he would like to explore the possibility of providing parents an app that allows them to track the location of their child’s bus.

“If we can educate and make people aware, the cameras become moot because everyone is adhering to the law, which would be a great outcome,” Troiano said. “This really becomes a very comprehensive approach to school bus safety, and it goes beyond just issuing notice of violations. It has a whole educational component, an awareness component and a peace-of-mind component for parents.” 

New Hyde Park resident David Lau, 55, has three children who attend Great Neck South middle and high schools, and use buses each school day. He said he has witnessed drivers speed past stopped buses many times. The proposed program, he said, will help ease his concerns. 

“People do things because they think they’ll get away with it, but if they’re aware that there’s a program in place where they’ll get caught, it certainly will help,” Lau said.

In Suffolk County, tens of thousands of motorists were captured by school bus cameras during an eight-month span in 2021 for purportedly failing to stop, yielding about $12.1 million in revenue, according to county officials.

There were 85,608 school bus camera violations from May, when the program began issuing fines, until December, according to a report created by BusPatrol America, the Virginia-based contractor that operates the program.