The AI School Bus Camera Company Blanketing America in Tickets
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I think the 80s machines used something more like hand built digital image processing to find the characters, but OCR is absolutely not new.
That said it does need to be more complex because to produce as few false positives as it can, which would cost BusPatrol money to review in their first pass before sending to police (so there's at least a minor incentive to reduce them), they would have to determine where the car is and if it's required to stop not just trigger if a car passes by while the arm is out. Laws vary a lot by state but usually if there's any kind of real median traffic in the opposite direction is not required to stop so it would at least need to detect if that is present (or work off a database that knows where all the divided roads are in the area I'm not sure which would be cheaper but mapping feels harder and having the camera able to determine if there's a median can be deployed anywhere while mapping data is location specific).
Hell, let's just police everyone's hard drives just in case, you know? Isn't catching pedophiles a good thing, after all?
But when you’re driving a deadly vehicle on public roads, you don’t have a legal right to privacy that’s the same as if you were on private property.
Laws first, then we’ll talk about cameras.
Cellphones have been doing this to all of us for decades.
An automated fine is the least painful way to enforce that.
You can say that we should only restrict this to critical safety situations, but it becomes a very slippery slope once cities start to see that revenue coming in. In some situations, cities have contracted private companies who profit on every ticket their cameras issue - that creates a huge conflict of interest and incentive for them to keep tuning the cameras to catch more and more 'offenses'.
With that said, the automation of law enforcement is deeply concerning to me. I'm of the opinion that most of our laws are calibrated based on enforcement costs that are simply being removed and it's going to fundamentally transform society if we continue to automate in this way.
Where is the automation? This is no more automated than a speed camera or a parking camera. It's not even worthy of being called AI truth be told.
Traffic laws are underpoliced by orders of magnitude. Setting aside the general catastrophe which is car-centric (more like car-exclusive) design of our urban and suburban spaces. Technology gives us extremely cheap and easy ways to monitor traffic laws, much cheaper and much more reliable than having a cop roam around. The very least we can do is use it to make cars suck a bit less.
Other automated enforcement mechanisms like average speed cameras and automated tolling are more effective at achieving their purported goals. Ultimately, enforcement will always be secondary to proper road design in both cost and effectiveness.
The UK model for speed cameras is that they can (generally) only be placed in areas that have shown to have a higher than average number of accidents on the stretch of road, caused by speeding. So at least (in theory) they are focused on reducing accidents and not raising money.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
It seems pretty messed up to suggest that we shouldn’t enforce people not blowing through red lights because then they’ll slam on their brakes and cause rear end accidents instead.
The problem isn't the red-light camera itself, it is that whoever installs/manages them also reduces the time of the yellow-light warning, so the red light comes on significantly sooner. The normal yellow light timing is a properly studied and engineered interval based on traffic and speed to give drivers sufficient warning to see, decide, and go or slow-stop in a safe and predictable fashion.
When the red-light-camera installers/managers decide to cut that time to increase infractions and increase revenue, they create situations where drivers think they are going to make it to the intersection in good time, but are surprised by the sooner-changing red light, so emergency-brake before the line. This causes accidents, including accidents where the car is pushed into the intersection and causes a rear-end then T-bone.
This invalid yellow-red light timing was revealed in some lawsuits about it.
I think the right solution is to maintain properly engineered timing, install cameras that also trigger a full video from multiple angles, and manually evaluate each positive and ticket only the egregious ones and have records of the violators who caused accidents.
But since the easy money is evidently too much of a temptation to fck with people, ban them all.
We already ban the thing that is being abused — running red lights. Yet people do it with deadly results so much we're looking for another solution.
With the cameras, the camera salespeople and the town managers just can't get away from "It increases revenue (and if we screw with the yellow-light-timing we can increase it even more!".
I'd be all over making any town manager and red-light-camera-salesperson involved in a decision to screw with the red lights personally and criminally liable for any accidents resulting from screwing with yellow-light timing, and requiring all timing before installation to be officially logged, but they'll try to find ways around that too. And then there is the whole surveillance capitalism thing — we've got the cameras, why not record all license plates, and tie them to driver license and voting records, and, and, and...
What is the least-worst thing to do?
Red light cameras do NOT do so, and when the companies/cities screw with the properly engineered yellow light timing to increase revenue, the cameras INCREASE crashes and injuries. It has been definitively studied multiple times, and cities have de-installed camera systems after these findings.
If cameras are installed without adjusting the yellow- light timing, the effect is not demonstrated. Thinking about it, a likely camera ticket will reduce one of three types of red-light-running, where an impatient driver slows at the red light, looks, then crosses anyway if traffic is light. That one causes few accidents — the careful drivers are already careful and either don't do it or do it with sufficient cautions accidents are extremely unlikely.
The others, where the driver fails to see the red light and blows through it, or where they are just on some criminal blast through town (evading cops, high on drugs, whatever), will not be deterred in the slightest by the cameras. The eyesight of the first will not be helped by a likely camera-automated-ticket, and the second already has far bigger legal problems coming and won't care.
So, explain the circumstances where a red light camera actually reduces accidents and injuries. I'm not even seeing a plausible measurable effect beyond revenue extraction.
While running the red light is still dangerous, running it as soon as it turns red is unlikely to cause an accident. It's still ticketable, and if a cop sees it happen, they should make a stop and issue a ticket.
If you are distracted, or time the yellow light badly, and you have to make a decision on whether to lay on the horn and run the red light as soon as it changes, or slam your brakes and try to avoid running through the intersection, you're already in a position where you're going to have to commit a moving violation, and you don't need the threat of automatic monetary penalties guiding your judgement on which move to make.
There are situations where slamming the brakes creates a more serious hazard than running the red light, but the red light cameras only ticket you for running the red light. Why create an artificial preference for one hazard over the other, rather than trust the driver to drive defensively in these situations?
The cameras don't even need to go away; they just need a human in the loop to apply these tickets rationally. Maybe don't ticket the driver who barely missed yellow, but do ticket the driver who blew through the red with zero regard for the rules. Make sure these rules are understood by drivers, so that they don't fear automatic enforcement more than they do bodily harm to themselves and others, but still think twice about ignoring the rules of the road.
I find it interesting, as in the UK we don't have loads of red light cameras (though we do have them) but people driving through red lights is a rarity - even when there is no-one around and at night, the vast majority of people will obey a red light.
It's not just automated enforcement. It's the surveillance state we're sliding into.
But, what little I read about it, nothing from the photos or video show that the busses were actually signaling. A bus can stop, and you can pass it. When they embark children, they have to put their flashers on (or, back in the day on my busses, they had signals and a STOP sign that popped out from the driver side). When the flashers are running, that's when you are supposed to stop (both ways). Otherwise, it's just a bus on the side of the road.
"there’s evidence the program is heavily burdening residents who either can’t or don’t pay the fines."
Plenty of these tickets are BS that most actual cops would not write. The only saving grace is there is video instead of just someone's description of what happened.
I certainly believe there is room for discretion when officers write tickets, but not for passing a school bus.
It cuts both ways. I see lax and inconsistent enforcement (e.g. "profiling") as a greater concern.
In 2020 the county issued 36 citations per active camera, or 50,698 citations total. In 2025 the county issued 34 citations per camera, or 51,779 total.
Montgomery County’s steady stream of stop-arm violations stems largely from one problem: Drivers seem unsure or unaware of what to do when buses are traveling in the opposite lane. The school bus stop at 1400 East-West Highway exemplifies drivers’ confusion, says Moon, the state delegate, standing on the side of the road as traffic whooshes by. It’s right off the highway’s intersection with Colesville Road, a seven-lane thoroughfare with raised medians. In Maryland, drivers traveling in the opposite direction of buses are not required to stop if the roadway is separated by a physical median.
But East-West Highway has two turn lanes, or what Moon calls “a paint illusion,” in which “a median is suggested.” Here, without a true median, it’s illegal to pass the stopped bus, regardless of what lane you’re in, but it’s easy to miss the difference. Many of Montgomery County’s most ticketed stops have these false medians, in addition to wide, congested roads and four-way intersections that Moon says can make it hard for drivers to spot buses stopped across several lanes of traffic. In fiscal year 2025 some 89% of all stop-arm tickets issued at the county’s top-10 citation locations were for opposite-lane violations. “You’re dealing with a very congested urban environment with lots of changes,” Moon says. “There’s just infinite numbers of drivers on these commuter thoroughfares to replenish the people that are getting the first wave of tickets.”
I got one of these tickets here. The bus was obscured until it was already stopped, by a truck to my left. I was in the furthest possible lane. Very cool ~$380. (For further context, because like in principle I agree.)
Oh and for fun, if you follow that sidewalk down a bit, you get to see this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2281192,-75.3123541,3a,75y,7...
The sidewalk... just... ends because I guess crossing a bridge wasn't in scope?? and I'd pretty regularly see people and kids walking across it to get to the strip mall on the other side.
As for why the sidewalk abruptly ends, normally it's due to a border between municipalities: some of the municipalities in the area don't have sidewalks at all, and confusingly several of them have Lansdale postal addresses despite not actually being part of Lansdale proper (which does have sidewalks).
But in this specific case I think it's Upper Gwynedd Township on both sides of the bridge, so who knows.
I haven't lived there in decades, but sorry about your ticket in any case!
One other ironic wrinkle: iirc students have to walk to school if there's a route under 1 mile long with continuous sidewalk coverage. And that spot where you got ticketed is right about a mile from the high school. So if that bridge actually had sidewalks, maybe there would be no need for a bus stop in that location where you got the ticket.
[0] In my state with 2+ lanes and a center turn you're not required to stop for example: https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/license-id/driver-licenses/school-...
After falling for decades, annual pedestrian deaths in the US surged 70% from 2010 to 2023
That aligns suspiciously with the rise in smartphones.
Another funny thing is to notice which people are politically acceptable to record, such as store clerks, warehouse workers, call center workers, basically anyone being paid on the lower end.
But the higher up the socioeconomic ladder you go, the less politically acceptable it is have your actions recorded, even just for scrutiny after an incident.
In 2025 only one out of the top ten is a sedan (https://www.edmunds.com/most-popular-cars/).
I only see six sedans in your link. But regardless if you count CR-V or Fusion as a sedan, you are arguing for me. 2010 being a recession year is prominent for drop of trucks and SUVs in sales, not "near-total victory of SUVs and pickup trucks".
>In 2025
And how does this align with increase of pedestrian deaths from 2010 to 2023?
Case in point: where I live, the interstate is often congested, and a driver "camping" in the left lane frequently leads to traffic jams that back up for miles. The cars that get backed up become frustrated and start zooming and weaving through traffic in the right lanes to get past the blockage. And while there are plenty of police, they only go after the speeders (presumably because speeding tickets are more lucrative). I don't think I've ever seen someone pulled over for squatting in the left lane, despite the fact that it's illegal where I live and despite the presence of numerous signs that say "Keep Right Except to Past".
This is what I would call an example of a dysfunctional law, as I highly suspect that if one had the capability and interest to analyze aerial footage of traffic patterns, it would be found that left lane campers are a much more significant factor in the root cause of interstate traffic accidents than speeders. But the incentives are too perverse to fix the problem, so the situation persists.
There’s a school bus. It’s big and yellow. The stop is shining and blinking. There’s kids about to cross the road. So yes, my sympathy for this sort of behavior is non existent.
Yes, but they need to know that threat exists. If they arent aware the bus takes video and sends it to the police, then they don't see the threat. If they don't know you have to stop on a multi-lane road without a median, then they don't see the threat. That's why measuring repeat offenders could be a better signal than an overall number in a relatively short time.
As an aside, diplomats will gladly break laws with a $250 fine because they are largely immune. This is relevant as there are a fair amount in that region. So there are exceptions to your rule.
Fortunately drivers in my area (Detroit Metro) are all in a hurry and seem to want symbiosis with the rest of traffic. They stop and start almost instantly. Kids don't lolly gally. But when I lived in Northern Virginia, it was the opposite. Bus drivers really took liberty with blocking the road for WAY longer than necessary. Huge hall monitor energy, "i'm king of the castle i'll make you wait just to assert myself"
Fines are only punishments for the lower economic class and do little to correct behavior.
The other part is that punishment is only half the picture. Many of these infractions are likely based on ignorance, which could be addressed with education (the driving test in the US is a joke).
maybe they should stop driving dangerously
But then surveilence companies will simply find a reason to start tracking the clothes people wear as 'signals' so it's just going to be less cars with more surveilence.
Might still be an upgrade over a unique id glued to you.