New cameras issue tickets for passing stopped school buses

Drivers who drive past a school bus with an extended stop sign, which is illegal in Maryland, will soon have to pay up thanks to new cameras installed on the roughly 1,000 Baltimore County school buses.

Drivers will pay a $250 fee if photographed passing a school bus, Superintendent Myriam Rogers and police chief Robert McCullough said at a press conference announcing the program on Monday.

“Each year, we hear horrifying stories of cars that pass by busses at alarmingly high rates of speed,” Rogers said. “This is totally unacceptable, and I implore all drivers to slow down.”

The cameras started snapping photos Monday. For “at least” 30 days, McCullough said, drivers will only get a warning in the mail.

Once that “public awareness period” ends, drivers will face the $250 fine.

Buses from the private companies that transport some BCPS students will have the cameras as well. It’s unclear how many buses already have the cameras and when the buses without cameras will get them. Asked at the press conference, Rogers said only that “all buses will have these cameras.”

The program “most likely” won’t cost taxpayers any money, transportation operations manager Kenny West said in a brief interview after the press conference, because the fines will pay for the cameras. Any money left over goes into the county’s slush fund. A portion of the money is reserved for making walking safer in the county.

Staff from AngelTrax, which manufactures the cameras, will verify the citations, then a Baltimore County police officer will review them, Chief McCullough said.

New cameras are also being installed inside the buses to record the cabin, Rogers announced. The recordings will be accessible in a cloud-based system, replacing an old system where staff had to go to a hard-wired system to find the recordings and send them to the schools.