Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - The 2025-26 school year is upon us, and drivers in the "Queen City" are being reminded they'll be watched if they pass a stopped school bus. That's because starting Thursday, Buffalo Public Schools will be monitoring those violating the law with the use of stop arm cameras on school buses.
Steve Randazzo of BusPatrol, which installed the cameras on stop arms, says tens of thousands of tickets were issued last year.
"I'm happy to report that we saw significant behavioral change, about a 10% recidivism rate, so meaning over 90% of folks who got one ticket in the mail did not repeat," said Randazzo in an interview with WBEN.
He adds they were seeing close to 600 of these tickets issued per-week at the start of the program, and that number trailed down towards the end of the school year to around 400 per-week.
Randazzo says the city has added a heads-up to enforcement.
"What the city did was it installed digital safety message boards at the highest violation intersections in preparation for back to school. You will see Broadway and Fillmore, Bailey and Delavan and Main and Amherst. Those three intersections we saw, over the course of the year, were three of the school bus stop locations that had the highest propensity for violation," Randazzo noted.
Last year was the first year of the program, so drivers were initially given warnings. That will not be the case this year.
"The public is aware of this program, and now we're trying to make sure that it's top of mind again for back to school. So no warnings, but a very robust education campaign and community awareness campaign," said Randazzo.
Randazzo admits this is not a silver bullet.
"There are always going to be some level of silly drivers, distracted drivers, or people who are from out-of-town. But that's why what we see in communities that embrace what we call the '3 Es': Education, Enforcement and Engineering," he said. "Education, continuing to get the word out to drivers, parents, community members that stopping for the school bus is important, and reminding them of this program. Two, of course, enforcement, because there's, on some level, there's just some folks, unfortunately, that will take extra liberties on the roads without having that negative repercussion, that deterrent around the ticketing. And then thirdly, the communities, what I call engineering is the ones that use the data for good. We provide the city and the school district with all the violation hotspots that their school bus safety program experiences every month, and the communities that see the most behavioral changes are the ones that move school bus stops, reroute school busses to safer locations, do targeted enforcement with the police department on scene, and then additional behavioral interventions around education."
Buffalo's Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon announced Tuesday that ticketing for violators will begin immediately on Sept. 4, the first day of school in Buffalo. Those tickets will cost offenders $250, with added charges for additional offenses.