By Thia James

Sask. Rivers testing cameras on rural bus routes

Nov 21, 2014 | 6:11 AM

Two Saskatchewan Rivers School Division buses have been outfitted with cameras as part of a 90-day trial involving its rural routes.

One bus has cameras mounted externally and the other has cameras installed inside. The aim of the project is to capture possible infractions by other drivers, particularly those who do not stop when the stop arm is extended and flashing.

 “We’re starting out cautiously with a pilot,” said Donald Lloyd, chief financial officer for the school division.

“Our goal is to assess the effectiveness of those cameras before we move forward on a larger basis.”

He said there’s a lot of research around the positive things cameras can do for student safety and the safe operation of school buses.

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With the exterior surveillance cameras, when the arms are extended on the bus, the camera will capture images of vehicles that pass the bus when the arm is extended. When it comes to the interior-mounted cameras, provides the school board with information in cases where there is damage in the bus, or if there’s a fight on the bus. 

The cameras also yields information on how many times the buses stop and if there are other vehicles around.

“We want our bus drivers to keep their eyes on the road, and in some cases we believe these video cameras will be beneficial to, not only student safety, but also, in case of medical emergency or other related purposes.”

The trial is only taking place on the rural route buses because within the city limits, there is no bylaw requiring drivers to stop for school buses when the arms are extended. Last year, Prince Albert city council voted to keep the ban on the use of bus arms within city limits in place.

However, in the rural areas, the bus arms are used extensively, as Lloyd pointed out. He said that in an urban setting, bus arms have not been found to be that effective.

They’re more for instances when the buses stop on grid roads, he said.

The school board has already seen evidence of the kind of information the recordings can yield. One of the cameras captured a vehicle passing a school bus while the safety arm was extended.

“And this is a very dangerous situation. If the student was crossing in front of the bus, by way of example, and traffic didn’t come to a complete stop, then we have our students at risk,” Lloyd said.

The cameras have been in place on the two buses for the past three weeks. Since then, Saskatchewan Rivers has had an opportunity to look at the videos and review the quality.

Lloyd said they’re running the pilot project in a “controlled” way, because they wanted parents to be properly notified. Parents were informed about the cameras via a newsletter, according to Lloyd.

Not only will the school board be evaluating the evidence, but it will be looking at the cost as well.

Once the pilot period has ended, the findings will be presented to the school division’s board.

The cameras were installed by Winnipeg-based Teknisult. Its president and lead designer Maurice Gregoire said his company put together a national campaign and offered the cameras on a pilot basis to about 35 school divisions across the country. It was an effort to get national statistics.

One of the school divisions to respond was Saskatchewan Rivers.

So far, he said, there have been three violations captured on video from the Saskatchewan Rivers pilot project.

Teknisult raised $31,000 in March through a crowdfunding campaign, and some of those funds were used to develop the cameras and get them into production. The balance of those funds, $15,000 was spent on the pilot projects themselves.

Gregoire said it takes about 30 hours to go through all of the videos, collect data on all 10 of the pilot buses in its projects. During the pilot, the equipment doesn’t come at a cost to the school boards. Afterwards, they have an option of buying out the equipment at a discount.

“We’ll have a full report to be able to present to them, ‘this is how this one bus behaved.’ The objective is for the pilot is not just to collect the data. The violations need to go to the police and the police need to let the drivers know either by warning or by ticket that ‘yes, you’ve actually been caught on video, here’s your ticket, here’s your warning, whatever, but just don’t do that anymore.”

The Saskatchewan Rivers pilot is the only one run by Teknisult in this province.

“From this data we’re going to get here, we’re going to get what we want out of it is, is once the public is aware that there is a potential for a camera, not to put them on the bus, but to put them on the buses and move the buses around, that they learn that they learn to respect the stop sign, they learn to respect the school bus and not be afraid of the cameras.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames