Lee County drivers have a little more than a month to prepare to do what they should have been doing all along. Stop for school buses.
The month-long grace period is part of a Lee County school district program making bus safety a priority. The district plan will capture video evidence of drivers illegally passing stopped school buses.
The program starts in December and involves a partnership with the Lee County Sheriff's Office and Bus Patrol, a school bus safety provider.
"I will no longer tolerate or risk students getting hurt as they board or exit our busses," Lee Superintendent Denise Carlin said at a Joint Press Conference Thursday with Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno and Bus Patrol Vice President Donald Wolf. " That's a non-starter for me."
Carlin said there have been numerous instances of illegally passed school buses.
"In Lee County, we recorded 663 illegal passes during the state's one day annual survey in the spring. A year ago, the number was more than 900 and each of the two years before that, it was over 800. We cannot allow this to happen any longer," she said.
Carlin’s announcement kicks-off a 30 day warning period before full implementation and enforcement starts.
Marceno says the program costs nothing — BusPatrol’s AI-enabled stop-arm camera school bus safety program is provided at no cost and made possible through a violator-funded cost recovery model — and every violation gets scrutinized.
"This is a tremendous program, and the Lee County Sheriff's Office has a team in place and doesn't cost the Sheriff's Office anything. It gets funded by the program that reviews every single citation," he said. "A law enforcement officer is going to put eyes on the package that's sent to us to make sure and certain that if there's a violation that it fits the criteria in order to serve that violation, it's a civil penalty. It does not affect someone's driver's license."
Bus Patrol vice president Donnie Wolf said the company’s technology was a response to a growing problem with cars passing stopped school buses.
"Bus Patrol's mission is to make the ride to and from school safer for every child. We equip our technology on every single bus, because children, regardless of zip code, credence, neighborhood, the school they attend, they deserve the same safety technology."
Carlin said a district wide informational campaign will explain the system and the program prior to the start of enforcement on December 8.
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