Lee County is taking significant steps to ensure the safety of children at bus\u00a0stops with the implementation of new technology.<\/p>\n
The Lee County School District plans to install cameras on 900 school buses. If a driver passes a bus with its “stop” arm out, they will face a $225 fine.<\/p>\n
The district and the Lee County Sheriff’s Office are holding a joint news conference Thursday to discuss the new cameras and fines.<\/p>\n
This development comes as kids head to school, with the aim of preventing dangerous incidents like those seen in a video from Lehigh Acres earlier this year. In the footage, a student was seen getting off a bus with the stop arm extended, only to have a truck speed past without stopping.<\/p>\n
These bus patrol cameras are strategically placed on the top and sides of the buses. Videos from other counties, such as Brevard and Santa Rosa, show the cameras capturing drivers who speed past stopped school buses, ignoring the safety of children.<\/p>\n
The cameras record the license plates of offending vehicles, resulting in the issuance of a $225 fine.<\/p>\n
The district is allowing a 30-day warning period starting today for drivers to adjust to these changes. The fines will officially begin in December.<\/p>\n
In Miami-Dade County, the BusPatrol program recorded approximately 11,500 school bus violations during a 13-day period at the start of the 2024-2025 school year.<\/p>\n
Karoon Monfared, CEO of BusPatrol, said, “Over 90% of people who receive a violation, never receive one again. It truly does change behavior.”<\/p>\n
However, Miami-Dade faced challenges with the program due to issues with uniform traffic citations and incorrect violation notices.<\/p>\n
WINK News asked the Lee County School District why those issues won’t happen in Southwest Florida.<\/p>\n
David Newlan, Chief of Safety, Security and Fleet Operations for the School District of Lee County, said, “It [the violation] will be reviewed again by the sheriff’s office, so we can make sure it’s going towards a valid violation before they receive a citation.”<\/p>\n
While there were issues in Miami-Dade, the same BusPatrol cameras have been successfully used in Hillsborough County.<\/p>\n
The effectiveness of these cameras in Lee County remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
The school district and sheriff’s office news conference is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday to provide more details.<\/p>\n
WINK News will be present to bring updates both on air and online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee County is taking significant steps to ensure the safety of children at bus\u00a0stops with the implementation of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-35733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}