POLK COUNTY, Fla. — Starting this fall, drivers who pass a Polk County school bus while it's stopped could end up with a citation in the mail, without ever having been pulled over.
The school district confirmed that officials will begin installing safety cameras on 500 school buses with the goal of launching the program by the start of the upcoming school year.
Leaders say the cameras are needed to keep students safe, especially as the county sees an increase in the number of people moving into the area. In 2022 and 2023, Polk County saw the highest levels of population growth than any other county in the country, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
"More vehicles are on our roads than ever before. We are hopeful this innovative technology will help make our roadways less dangerous – particularly for our students," Superintendent Frederick Heid said.
The county has more than 115,000 students and over 120 schools, according to a news release.
The cameras will be installed on buses so that when its stop arm is extended, usually when students are getting on or off, it will be able to capture any drivers who illegally pass the stop sign. Violators will be sent a citation to pay. Drivers can challenge the citation within 30 days of the ticket being sent to them.
"With children on school buses and people running that stop sign, there's going to be zero tolerance," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
In 2023, officials said the Florida Department of Education conducted a survey that showed nearly 8,400 school buses were passed illegally in just one day. Looking at Polk County specifically, the school district confirmed it did a 'one-day' count test on May 1 and saw 700 violations of the school bus safety law. In April 2023, a similar test counted 1,039 violations in a day.
The company working with the county, Verra Mobility Corporation, said that 98 percent of drivers ticketed for illegally passing a stopped school bus don't do it again.
"...through community awareness, programs experience a 12 percent reduction in issued citations," the company said.
Under a Florida law passed in 2023, school districts are allowed to partner with a private company to install the cameras as part of a school safety program. The law required buses with cameras to have signage on the back of the bus that says "STOP WHEN RED LIGHTS FLASH" or "DO NOT PASS WHEN RED LIGHTS PASS," also have the words "CAMERA ENFORCED" written out and include an illustration of a camera.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on May 17 that updates the 2023 law. Changes include allowing money collected from citations to go toward paying for the cameras and transportation safety efforts. The revisions also clarified that images and video taken by the cameras cannot be used for anything other than determining whether a driver illegally passed a school bus and that the collection of that evidence doesn't constitute remote surveillance.
Hillsborough County also previously announced it was in the process of installing cameras to capture passing violations in Oct. 2023. At that time, officials said the buses would have the cameras starting on Jan. 8, 2024. 10 Tampa Bay reached out to the school district on Jan. 10, 2024 for an update, and was told that the installation hadn't yet begun. 10 Tampa Bay followed up on May 17 and hasn't heard back.
This story will be updated if a response from Hillsborough County is received.
