Iowa Program Allows Districts to
Trial Digital Stop Arm Cameras

SPENCER, Iowa - A school district in northwest part of the state has it eye firmly focused on motorists who illegally pass school buses, using new digital video cameras made possible by a statewide pilot program designed to make the loading/unloading zone safer for students.

Spencer Community Schools currently has digital video cameras installed on two of its 16 buses, with plans to outfit two more buses next school year and as new school buses are purchased in the future, said Transportation Director Dan Schultz. In the past two years on one of those buses, the district has already seen a reduction in illegal passings by 75 percent, from 40 incidences in 2002-2003 to 10 so far this year. Now, if only funding remains constant.

" I'd like to really see if we can some day get federal support. That would be where I'd like to see it go, personally," said Schultz. "The only real hold back is the money issue."

So far, Iowa has been proactive in ensuring that school districts have an opportunity to discover the benefits of implementing onboard surveillance systems that not only catch motorists who ignore the school bus stop arm but also monitors student behavior. The state's "Stop Arm Camera Project" was developed by the Iowa Department of Transportation, the Iowa Department of Education and the Iowa Association for Pupil Transportation in 2002 to allow school districts to run a pilot program using VHS analog recorders.

A one day survey of schools four years earlier demonstrated that 541 stop arm violations occurred in 156 schools, which equates to 97,380 violations per a 180-day school year. Of 713 respondents to an STN online survey conducted last fall, 73.4 percent said a bus driver's report of a passing motorist violation to police should automatically result in a traffic ticket to the motorist. Meanwhile, 14.1 percent said a ticket should not be automatically issued, 6.4 said probably not and 5.8 were unsure.

"That's a lot of chances for getting some children hurt," said Max Christensen, the state's transportation director at the DOE. "(The program) gives the schools a chance to try something they probably wouldn't be able to afford."

Twenty-five school districts statewide have so far participated in the program on a rotating basis.

Spencer was one of five school districts to first implement the cameras during the 2001-2002 school year. But the transportation department soon found that the analog video capabilities often led to grainy images of passing vehicles that were of little help to law enforcement officers. For the next school year, Schultz and the transportation department purchased their own digital recorders. The school district spent between $2,000 and $2,500 depending on the whether the individual school bus received two or three cameras.

According to Christensen, the state spent $7,000 last year using funds from IDOT's Safety Management Systems to upgrade the five original cameras to digital from VHS, or about $1,400 each. It cost the state another $6,000 to purchase the three new digital units and another $1,200 for school district training.

"We've had a few complaints on analog's ability to capture license plate numbers," Christensen said.