Stop sign cameras have come to Broward school buses – NBC 6 South Florida

Drivers beware: Broward school buses are now equipped with cameras to catch you going around the stop signs that extend from the side of the buses. 

The bus drivers heartily approve. 

“It’s great, I love driving, I love kids,” said Ricardo La Pompe, a veteran school bus driver. He told us he’s excited about the new technology. 

“It helps everybody around the vicinity,” La Pompe said, explaining how crashes happen when cars fail to stop. 

“Basically, what the cameras are gonna do is they’re gonna detect anyone who illegally passes the bus,” said Dr. Simone Clowers, the executive director of transportation at Broward County Public Schools. 

Violators will get a $225 ticket in the mail. 

“That extra cash they have, they gonna be spending it now, because sometimes the stop sign comes out and they just fly past,” La Pompe said. 

Clowers says it’s clearly a safety issue. 

“The drivers are ecstatic; every year they have to manually calculate this and send it up to the state, so they are ecstatic to know that students are gonna be safer,” Clowers said. “How can people pass the stop arm when they know students are loading and unloading?”

Miami-Dade County Public Schools started and then stopped their bus camera program last year when controversies arose over how the citations were issued. They reinstated the initiative, promising that sheriff’s deputies would review each case before tickets were mailed to drivers. 

Broward Schools has the benefit of hindsight. Learning from Miami-Dade’s experience, police officers will inspect each citation before it’s sent. 

The district is also looking to hire between 60 and 100 bus drivers. Pay starts at $21 per hour. That shortage will affect the 45,000 students who ride the bus every day. 

“The lack of resources impacts the students simply because the ride time is longer, when you have less drivers, you have less routes and less buses, so that means there’s more stops in the morning and the afternoon, so the kids are on the bus a little longer than last year or the year before,” Clowers said.

She recommends parents make sure they know where their child’s bus stop is because it might have changed.

“The beauty of it is, though, our drivers are used to it, when you work for the district, you already know you may have to pivot on a dime so there’s always a challenge making sure you capture all the kids who need your service, but we do it successfully every year and we will do it successfully this year, too,” Clowers explained.