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This month a lot of people are about to get a nice $250.00 surprise in the mail. Maybe a few surprises. Let's see if the public pressures the government to get rid of bus cams the way they did school speed zone cams.
I already got a ticket for this in 2021. I was going to see a new doctor in Huntington and I was not familiar with the area. I was so focused on listening to my GPS and the road I had no Idea I passed a bus with the stop sign out on New York Ave.
Needless to say my husband was pissed.
My guess is more people are in favor of bus cams than any other kind of passive enforcement. People do some truly ludicrous things around school buses, and I think we all learned the rules in elementary school.
Are we getting this is Nassau soon? There is video on you tube released by Suffolk County of several incidents. We need this in Nassau too. About once a month ago I see someone drive around a stopped school bus. $250 is not high enough, in my opinion.
I don't like the idea of any enforcement by traffic camera. That said, I wouldn't mind the school bus camera thing if they did a few things in return.
1. Go back to actual school bus stops. In my area the school bus stops about every three houses. That's about 4-5 stops on one street. It's more a door-to-door taxi service. These middle and high school kids can walk 200 feet on a sidewalk. This would have the added benefit of the kids actually being ready and waiting for the bus in the morning. Now, the bus pulls up to the home, and it can take a while for the kid to actually leave the house and get on the bus. It's a long enough wait that the driver will wave people on (even with lights flashing). I'll wait even when they turn the lights off (because they will come back on with no notice).
2. Change the laws about divided highways. It's absurd that cars 6 lanes away on the other side of a median need to stop. If the argument is that the kid must cross that road, then the bus should stop on the other side.
3. Change bus stops to safer locations (where they use bus stops instead of door-to-door service). I get it that some kids may live on a divided highway, so some exceptions should be made. It still seems safer to have the bus turn on to a less busy residential street to drop off the kid. It won't kill them to walk an extra 50 feet.
4. And while I'm at it... school buses should not be on major highways. Especially not in the left lane. If "speed kills" there is no reason for a busload of kids to be on the LIE at 60-70 mph. Just as bad if the bus is going 50-55 with the traffic zipping around at 70. There are plenty of secondary roads available on LI. There might be an argument for certain exceptions where an expressway is necessary. For a daily bus route, there is no reason for it. Wouldn't it be "safer" to simply ride even the service road at 40mph than the expressway at 60mph+?
Like so many things, the cameras are about money under the guise of "it's for the children." There are other ways to make things safer for the kids and motorists that are never considered. What does get considered is a plan that makes the state a few dollars while awarding a very lucrative camera contract to political donors.
I also wonder if this a solution in search of a problem. Is intentionally passing a school bus really a thing? (Cameras won't stop people who do it accidentally). I drive quite a bit and only seen it happen once or twice on a large divided highway like Jericho Tpke. Has there been a number of kids getting hurt in recent years that prompted this program? Or did Hocul just need to pay back some of the people who helped get her elected?
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