Oneida County Sheriff touts new program keeping kids on school buses safer

ORISKANY, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — It’s an incident like the one in Manlius back in March that the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office is hoping to avoid. The department is partnering with Verra Mobility, implementing the Crossing Guard School Bus Stop-Arm Enforcement program.

“The problem is with most of these cases, we could never find out who the operator was,” said Oneida County Sheriff Rob Maciol. “That’s what drove the New York State Legislature to pass a new law which allowed us to have cameras on buses which would capture the vehicle passing it and we would cite the registered owner.”

During the 2022 to 2023 school year, before the cameras were installed, the sheriff’s office gave out 24 citations to drivers passing stopped school buses. The following year, with the cameras on bus stop arms, they issued 852.

“The system is pretty well set up. The camera turns on before the stop arm comes out, so you can see when you view an event, you can see seconds before the event happens in the video. You’ll see the lights come on first, then the arm come out, and then the vehicle pass by,” Sheriff Maciol said.

The sheriff wants to remind the public that with the security cameras, it’s not about catching drivers in the act, but instead making sure that children are safe.

“The most tragic thing that is going to occur is the child getting struck by the car,” Sheriff Maciol said. “When that door opens on that school bus, those children are going to come off it pretty quick. If a car is passing on the right side, believe it or not, we’ve had it happen, that child is going to get struck the minute they step off that bus.”

And getting caught is a hefty penalty too.

“For the first violation, it’s a $250 fine,” Sheriff Maciol said. “If they get cited a second and third time, those violations could go up to $1,000.”

There are 13 school districts in Oneida County. Sheriff Maciol says eight of them were a part of the safety program last school year. He is working to get cameras for the remaining five districts in time for the start of the upcoming school year.

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