School bus cameras caught Miami’s reckless drivers in the act — and it’s about time | Opinion
We all know anecdotally that Miami-Dade drivers are pretty terrible. We see it on the streets: Drivers running red lights, dodging in and out of traffic at top speed like they’re in a video game, refusing to signal their intentions by turning on their blinkers and generally acting like traffic laws shouldn’t apply to them.
But now we have new proof: the school bus tickets.
Have you heard about those? Miami-Dade Police Department launched an initiative this school year to install cameras on school buses and use artificial intelligence to enforce the law that requires drivers to stop for stopped buses. How did Miami do? A whopping 13,500 citations issued in just the first 13 days of school this year, the Miami Herald reported.
The vice president of government relations at BusPatrol, the company that operates the cameras, called the citation number “stunning.” We call it appalling. But, in fact, it’s not that shocking if you’re a regular driver on our roads and witness the extremely casual way many drivers treat the rules of the road.
You remember the school bus law from driver’s ed, right? When a bus stops, with lights flashing and an arm sticking out of the side with the word STOP on it, you have to do what it says: stop. That applies to drivers on both sides of the road, unless there’s a raised median. It’s a basic measure that’s supposed to keep kids safer as they cross the road getting on or off the bus.
The law is nothing new — in Florida or across the country — but in Miami, we have apparently decided that this rule, like so many other traffic laws, is optional. You only have to take a trip on our roads at rush hour to see example after example.
To be fair, some of it can be attributed to defensive driving. If you don’t run that yellow-light-turning-red, you may get hit because the guy behind you will probably run it, and the one behind him, too.
It doesn’t help that we hit the horn impatiently the moment the light changes (something that Senior Editorial Writer Isadora Rangel has dubbed “the Miami millisecond.”)
And anyone who has ever witnessed cars illegally jumping in or out of the express lane on Interstate 95, running over the lane-divider poles in a reckless disregard for safety, knows how crazy drivers can be in this town.
Add all that up and 11,500 citations starts to seem less than surprising.
There were warnings. Starting April 8, about 10,000 warnings were mailed to offenders, alerting them about the crackdown. And Miami-Dade Police posted a video on X in late August showing several drivers blithely passing school buses, despite flashing red stop signs on the front and back of the bus — even as children were crossing the street.
A total of about 950 buses in Miami-Dade have been equipped with the cameras in a collaborative agreement with the school board, the county police department and BusPatrol. The high-resolution artificial intelligence technology, triggered when the bus stop signs are deployed, captures photos of the license plates of cars that don’t stop. (Other cameras on board the buses are also being used to monitor bullying, fights and other issues.)
Each citation comes with a $225 fine. That comes to a total of about $2.5 million in under two weeks. Half the money collected in fines is eventually supposed to go back to the camera company, which didn’t charge the county for installing the technology.
Donny Wolfe, the BusPatrol vice president, told the Miami Herald that he’s a dad and he hopes this helps educate drivers about measures to keep children safe on and around buses. The company has programs in 17 states and says that, generally, as awareness of the law grows, citations are reduced.
“I hope this continues to curb reckless driver behavior,” he told the Herald.
We hope so, too. But judging by Miami’s Thunderdome culture on the roadways, it may be a very slow process.
