Shown are stop arm cameras installed on a Wawasee Community School Corporation bus. Each bus has two cameras, one facing forward and the other to the rear.

SYRACUSE — School corporation administration responded to a grandparent’s concern about school bus safety.

During the Sept. 12 Wawasee Community School Corporation board meeting, Rhonda Ousley, who lives near North Webster, asked for consideration to install cameras near the stop arms on buses. She noted she had seen multiple occurrences of vehicle drivers not stopping when the arms were activated.

Mike Snavley, transportation director for WCSC, said he would check into it and, as it turns out, “we had room in our budget” to purchase a few cameras. Two buses of the current fleet have the stop arm cameras installed on them now. Each bus needs two cameras — one facing forward and one to the rear and they are installed underneath the stop arm. Snavley said the cost to have cameras installed is about $400 per bus.

He said it is hoped cameras can be installed on three more buses by the spring of 2018 and five new buses approved for purchase by the school board at the Nov. 14 meeting will already have the cameras installed. He noted it is anticipated any new buses ordered from this point forward will have the cameras as part of the bus specifications.

Purchasing the stop arm cameras is an addition to a system already in place, Snavley noted. Cameras are already mounted inside buses and “we had already paid for the (system) hard drive,” he said.

Stop arm cameras capture live video, which can be paused and a screen shot obtained when it is possible a driver has driven through when the stop arm has been activated. The video has to be carefully watched, though, because sometimes it will show a driver could have been distracted and did not immediately slow down. But it will also show when it is obvious a violation occurred.

“The license plate can be seen well,” Snavley said, and if is still daylight even the driver can usually be seen well.

On the first day a camera was in use, he noted, “someone ran through a stop arm” and there have been a couple of other stop arm violations caught by the cameras.

When it appears a violation occurs, Snavley sends the video along with pictures of the license plate to Joe Leach, school resource officer who is also an officer with the Syracuse Police Department. “I then have to try to figure out who the driver of the vehicle was at the time the stop arm was ran,” Leach said. “If I write a ticket for running the stop arm of the bus I have to ID the person driving the vehicle. I can’t just write a ticket to the registered owner of the vehicle.”

Leach also will contact the county prosecutor’s office to make them aware when he writes a ticket.

Snavley said the purchase of the stop arm cameras is one more thing that can be done to promote safety and increase awareness. Stop arm violations are a problem locally and statewide, he said. “It’s worth it for the footage you get,” he said concerning purchase of the cameras.

And, he added, one of the buses with the cameras installed is the one Ousley watches her grandchildren board.