In Pittsburgh, it may soon become a more costly decision, too.
The city school board is set to vote next week to approve a five-year contract with BusPatrol, a tech company that uses artificial and machine learning to monitor the area around stopped school buses and document any illegal passes. That information is then turned over to police, who issue citations as part of an attempt to deter future infractions.
In a pilot program in which BusPatrol's tech was installed on 20 buses in various areas of the city between May 1 and mid-June, the company said it found an estimated 553 violations, or 0.8 violations per bus, per day. That rate is about double what the company finds on average across all of its aggregate programs, according to Jean Souliere, CEO and founder of BusPatrol.
"The data speaks plainly about the problem," Mr. Souliere said. "It lays the framework out in my experience, and it highlights a serious problem in Pittsburgh."
Mr. Souliere told school board members during a presentation last week that the number of violations drop by 20 percent to 30 percent in the first year that a school district is in the program, which also includes an educational campaign involving television and radio advertisements.
During the presentation, Mr. Souliere played videos of vehicles passing stopped Pittsburgh school buses during the pilot program. Some of the recordings showed vehicles narrowly missing children and parents walking across the street.
"That's really, really alarming to see that video where kids are walking across [the street] with their parent holding a hand, and the car doesn't even stop," said board member Bill Gallagher.
According to BusPatrol, which is based in Lorton, Va., more than 136,000 school bus-related injuries and over 1,000 fatalities have occurred in the past decade. One of the leading causes, the company said, is illegal passes.
BusPatrol already works with districts in several states, including Pennsylvania. It plans to launch the program at 20 more school districts in Pennsylvania this fall.
The company's tech collects video of an offense and other information, including a license plate number, and turns it into an evidence package that it sends to police. If police then approve the citation, BusPatrol prints it and mails it to the vehicle owner, who can go online and view a video of their vehicle passing a stopped bus.
Less than 5 percent of people contest their tickets, and of the 5 percent that contest, less than 2 percent actually show up at court, according to Mr. Souliere. BusPatrol said the program has proven to increase safety because 98 percent of offenders do not get cited by the company a second time.
Data that BusPatrol collects is able to determine problematic bus stops and locations throughout the city. Because the company is connected to the Department of Motor Vehicles, it can also track where the offenders come from, helping to inform where its educational programs should be pushed.
The program comes at no cost to the district as it literally pays for itself. BusPatrol gets paid by revenue garnered from the $300 citations, which are split between police, the school district and the company. A conservative estimate showed the district would receive $500,000 per 100 buses per year that it can invest back into schools, according to Mr. Souliere.
The city schools use the services of about 160 CDL buses and an additional amount of smaller yellow buses.
If approved by the board, the technology could be installed on the city's school buses before the start of the school year. The program would begin with a warning period before citations start being issued.
Michael McNamara, the district's chief operating officer, called BusPatrol's pilot program "successful" and said it showed that Pittsburgh has a problem.
"I was expecting to see a lot of violations," he said, "but I was not expecting to see this many."
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