BusPatrol hosts school bus safety summit on LI | Long Island Business News

BusPatrol, a provider of automated school bus camera technology, held the first-ever New York School Bus Safety Summit in Great River last week. 

The event, organized in partnership with the New York Association for Pupil Transportation, drew about 150 attendees to the Mansion at Timber Point where the discussion centered on school districts can employ camera technology to enhance school bus safety and protect students from illegal motorist passings. 

Speakers at the summit included Karoon Monfared, CEO and president of BusPatrol; Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon; Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison; and Liz Gilleo, transportation director for the Hendrick Hudson School District in Westchester County. 

BusPatrol, which has offices in Hauppauge, supplies automated cameras mounted on the stop arms of school buses. The cameras snap images of vehicles that illegally pass school buses and generate fines for those offending drivers. Besides working with municipalities on Long Island, BusPatrol’s growing client list includes Albany, Monroe, Dutchess, Rensselaer and Rockland counties, according to a company statement. 

“We’ve seen a nearly 30 percent decline in year-over-year school bus stop arm violations since the start of the Suffolk County school bus safety program,” Karoon Monfared, CEO and president of BusPatrol, said in the statement. “That means drivers are stopping for school buses and creating safer conditions for our kids.” 

The summit’s keynote speaker, State Sen. Tim Kennedy, who serves as chair of the New York State Senate Committee on Transportation, has championed legislation to authorize municipalities and school districts to install safety cameras on school buses. 

Since that legislation was signed into law in 2019, almost 7,000 New York school buses have been equipped with the camera technology to curb illegal motorist behavior, protecting more than 350,000 students, according to the statement. 

Suffolk County law enforcement officials spoke at the summit about the growing challenge of distracted driving with the prevalence of social media apps and how there is a need for greater awareness around school bus safety.

“Students imitate the behavior they see. So, if they have been in vehicles at 7- or 8-years old, watching people use phones while driving, they are going to copy that behavior,” Toulon said in the statement. “We are leveraging technology – social media sites can detect when you are driving and stop you from using those sites – and raising awareness. But we have to make sure that there is accountability for people driving distracted.” 

Commissioner Harrison said police officers have been granted additional enforcement capabilities with the availability of school bus camera technology.

“We can’t be at every single school bus stop, but having these cameras on school buses and seeing firsthand how stop-arm violations take place is alarming,” Harrison said. “No one here can say with confidence that their child will get on and off the school bus safety, and if we can’t hold drivers accountable, it’s not taken seriously.” 

The most recent survey conducted by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation suggests that school buses are illegally passed an estimated 41.8 million times each year in the United States. In New York, there are 50,000 illegal passings each school day according to the Governor’s Office of Traffic Safety. 

“In New York state alone, school bus contractors employ nearly 50,000 people and operate roughly 30,000 school bus vehicles,” said Nick Vallone, president of the New York School Bus Contractor’s Association. “This is an exciting time for the industry. Innovations like stop-arm cameras have revolutionized how we think about student transportation.” 

r