For the past several weeks, Student Transportation Services of Brant Haldimand Norfolk has been taking part in a pilot project.
Two buses per region have been equipped with cameras on their stop arms.
By law, when a bus is pulled to the side of the road with their lights activated and stop arm out all drivers must come to a complete stop, on both sides of the roads, as students are either going on or getting off the bus.
Sadly, this is not always the case as drivers continue to drive by putting kids in harm’s way.
With the data collected over the past several weeks, Philip Kuckyt from Student Transportation Services of Brant Haldimand Norfolk will be speaking to the Norfolk Police Services Board this morning (Wednesday).
The hope is to bring them up to date with what they’ve received and an overview of how the program works.
After this, Kuckyt is planning on going to each municipality to get their stamp of approval to expand the program so that all buses have these cameras equipped.
The issue at hand is that drivers continue to speed around stopped buses with little to no consequences.
That’s because, for drivers to face any form of punishment, it would have to mean bus drivers would need to take their eyes off the kids.
The cameras record any vehicle the speeds by and uploads it automatically to a cloud system which is then sent to the police.
Kuckyt says the biggest draw to this program is the price.
In order to get cameras on all bus stop arms, it wouldn’t cost the school board or the municipality any money.
Kuckyt will be speaking shortly after 9 a.m. this morning.
He will need the approval of each municipality moving forward to expand the program.
