(BOSTON 12/30/2024) — Today, the Massachusetts Legislature approved legislation that will allow cities and towns in Massachusetts to install automated traffic enforcement cameras on school busses to document drivers who unlawfully pass a bus while it is stopped and its stop sign is displayed. The bill, championed by Second Worcester District Senator Michael Moore, comes after a resolution was passed by the Worcester School Committee in November 2022 calling for local control over this issue.
S.3005 - An Act concerning the safety of school children embarking and disembarking school buses will help local police better enforce existing laws prohibiting the passing of a stopped school bus – laws that currently go underenforced. In districts that choose to employ them, these camera systems will take photos and videos of vehicles that are in violation of the law, but it will be up to the local police department to review the footage and decide whether a fine should be issued. Busses equipped with automated traffic cameras must be clearly marked and fines collected from violations will be allocated to the city or town in which the violation occurred.
“When drivers pass a stopped school bus, they are endangering schoolchildren who are simply trying to get to or from school. We owe it to our youth to better protect them from roadway dangers,” said Senator Michael Moore (D-Millbury). “This legislation strikes a balance between bringing automated enforcement to those who violate laws that protect our schoolchildren while implementing safeguards to ensure individuals’ rights to privacy and due process are respected. A version of this law has already been approved in at least 24 other states – I am hopeful that Massachusetts will soon join them with Governor Maura Healey’s signature.”
To protect the privacy of drivers and pedestrians, the bill requires the implementation of certain measures to avoid capturing identifiable images of vehicle occupants unless unavoidable. Further, the law requires that non-violation recordings be destroyed within 30 days of capture, while violation-related data must be deleted within a year after final case resolution. Data, including images and videos, will be owned by the municipality and cannot be used for any other purpose by vendors. Districts using the system must file an annual report to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation detailing citation statistics, outcomes, costs, and revenue generated.
During the summer of 2023, Peabody Public Schools launched a pilot program that outfitted 10 of its school busses with automated traffic enforcement cameras. The district reported that, between September 1st and October 10th of that year, the cameras recorded 864 vehicles illegally passing stopped Peabody Public School busses. Though this program was only to collect statistics and was not used to issue citations, it illustrates the scale of the problem on Massachusetts streets and the urgency of this legislation.
Having been passed in the House and the Senate, the bill now goes to Governor Maura Healey’s desk for her signature.
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