School bus gets camera to catch bad drivers

Anglophone East School District has installed acamerabelow the flashing red lights on the back of one of its buses to record of drivers who failto stop at thesignal.

Those images will be used byauthorities to issue tickets.

Aubrey Kirkpatrick, director of finance and administration for the district with headquarters in Moncton,says itreceivesbetween fiveand 10 reports a day from its 89 drivers aboutmotorists who don't stop.

"The whole pilot project came as a result of the feedback that we had been getting over the last number of years from our drivers," says Kirkpatrick.

Drivers are required to report any red light infractions that take place on their routes. But getting all the pertinent information, such as plate numbers and car make, is difficult while they're concentrating on their job.

"The struggle has always been to get enough and accurate information because our drivers are focused solely on the safety of children crossing roads and busy highways and that sort of thing. So it makes it difficult for them to get all the license plate down or get a description of the driver, the things that are required to follow up on," says Kirkpatrick.

"We decided that if we could get a system that would help with identification of drivers who are going through the red lights and creating this safety issue for children, that we could provide more information for follow up," he says.

Other school districts have given the cameras a ride on their school buses. Anglophone West and South have installed them on school buses informally to help drivers nab motorists who fly through the flashing red lights.

Brien Watson, the President of CUPE 1253 and representative of all custodians, bus drivers and maintenance staff in the province, says the cameras are essential.

"You've got to imagine a driver trying to catch the license plate of a car, the type of a car it is, the colour of a car, if it was a man or woman driving all of that in an instant while trying to make sure that their child is safe," says Watson.

"Cameras can record all this information and all our driver has to do is push a button and it marks that video of the last few seconds so it could be retrieved and viewed."

Since installing the camera two weeks ago, Kirkpatrick says there havebeen four recorded violations.