By Abby Rogers
Virginia Statehouse News
RICHMOND — Drivers beware. If you pass another stopped school bus, you might find yourself caught on camera.
Delegate Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, sponsored a bill that will allow local school districts to install cameras on school buses to catch drivers illegally passing stopped buses. State Sen. Janet Howell, D-Reston, sponsored identical legislation in the Senate.
“I think it’s a good public safety measure,” Miller said.
The legislation passed out of the General Assembly and is headed to Gov. Bob McDonnell for his signature.
The legislation doesn’t require school districts to install cameras, but it gives districts the flexibility to use the cameras if they want.
The Virginia School Boards Association, which didn’t actively lobby for the bill during session, supports the opt-in aspect of the program, said Executive Director Barbara Coyle.
Making the cameras optional allows school boards to make decisions based on the magnitude of the problem in their area, she said.
Some school districts already use cameras, but to monitor students’ behavior, not drivers on the roadway.
“We have cameras on all our buses,” said Wayde Byard, spokesman for Loudon County Public Schools.
Those cameras are located inside the buses and are used to monitor students’ behavior and the drivers’ driving.
Byard said he doesn’t have solid evidence either way to know whether the new legislation would help the school district since stories about drivers passing stopped buses is “usually anecdotal.”
“Most people obey the law, but there’s always a few,” he said. “Drivers regularly report that.”
The bills are new legislation, so the district hasn’t had time to study how the plan would fit into its budget, but money is always a concern when trying to implement new programs.
“I don’t know how much money we have right now,” Byard said.
The district has 737 buses it would have to outfit with cameras if it so chooses. When the district decided to put seatbelts on its buses, it found itself with a bill of $10,000, he said.
“It does run up a bill,” Byard said about making such large-scale changes.
Even though it supports the idea of these cameras, the state isn’t ready to help pay for them. A legislative report acknowledged the districts will incur extra costs when installing the video-monitoring systems, but it “does not require the Commonwealth to provide any funding to support such a system.”
However, the legislation does require that anyone caught on camera found guilty of passing a stopped bus be fined. It requires the guilty to pay a $250 fee to the applicable school district plus any related court costs and fees.
Miller called the fine a “crucial part of the legislation” that will help districts finance the cameras.
He said he believes vendors would be willing to set up a credit system with districts where vendors install the cameras and are paid back over time with money from the fines.
But Miller said he isn’t concerned about how to pay for the camera. His main focus was to ensure the safety of school children, he said.
Miller said he hasn’t heard any backlash about the government overstepping its bounds with this new legislation.
“It’s not unprecedented territory at all for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” he said.
The program doesn’t immediately presume the driver’s guilt, making it less tough than Virginia’s red-light cameras or tollbooth cameras, which take pictures and simply mail tickets to the offenders.
The image taken by the camera on the bus would serve as evidence in court. The bus driver would still have to go to court and testify that the driver was the one who drove past the stopped bus, Miller said.
The sole purpose of the legislation is to catch drivers passing stopped school buses, and it is “prohibited from being used for other purposes,” according to the legislation’s fiscal analysis.
are there any problems with drivers passing school buses when signs are out on buses in fairfax virginia amd if so what task force is there to help the problem