Makes the owner of a vehicle used to pass or overtake a stopped school bus jointly liable with the operator thereof when violation is on camera or observed

Summary of provisions

Section one of the bill amends the vehicle and traffic law by adding a new section 225-a to make an owner of a vehicle used to pass or overtake a stopped school bus jointly liable with the operator thereof when violation is on camera or observed.

Section two amends section heading and subdivision 1 of section 226 of the vehicle and traffic law, as added by chapter 1074 of the laws of 1969 to permit violation notices to be issued if such passing is recorded on camera or observed by school bus operator.

Section 3 accounts for instances if the vehicle was driven without the authorization of the owner. section 4 allows fox prosecution based on photographic evidence or observation of school bus operator.

Sections 5 and 6 amend the penal law to add passing of school bus to the categories for which harsher penalties are given in case of causing injury or death of another person.

Justification

In our state, current estimates indicate that motorists illegally pass a stopped school bus more than 50,000 times per day. (Safeny.ny.gov). This alarming statistic places our children at risk of injury or even death. Illegally passing motorists have been responsible fox killing two of New Yorks children in the past four years and several more children have been injured.

This legislation facilitates the apprehending and conviction of those who illegally pass school buses and ensures proper prosecution when a child is injured or killed by an illegally passing motorist. In 2002, the Kansas State Department of Education released a 32-year national study on school bus loading and unloading zones and found that 1,102 students were killed by another vehicle while boarding or during egres- sion.

Many school districts have already been installing cameras on their busses to protect our children and to stop this illegal passing. For example, the Canandaigua City School District has been selected to participate in a statewide pilot project related to school bus safety and the dangerously high incidence of illegally passing school buses.

New York Association for Pupil Transportation has partnered with the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee to install an "ELSAG" digital mobile license plate reader on a Canandaigua City School District school bus. The camera is part of a pilot project funded by DMV and the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee with funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The reader is similar to those used by many law enforcement agencies. It is designed to assist in the identification and apprehension of individuals who pass stopped school buses. Such passing of stopped school buses is a crime and poses serious dangers to our children. A previous pilot of this equipment demonstrated that motorists were passing the school bus on an average of 1.6 times per day.

One child's death is always one too many, yet staggering numbers demon- strate how many close calls occur each day.

A one-day Virginia study conducted in 1996 of 119 school districts found that 3,394 motorists illegally passed a stopped school bus. For a 180-day school year, that would equate to over 600,000 violations. Even more alarming was that 187 of these violations were on the right-side of the bus where students egress.

The same year, the Illinois Department of Transportation's Division of Traffic Safety surveyed 250 school bus drivers over a 41-day period. 135 drivers responded with 3,450 violations. This is estimated to be over 1.9 million violations in one year.

A 1997 survey conducted by the National Survey of Speeding and Other Unsafe Driving Actions, commissioned by NHTSA, actually found that 99 percent of drivers interviewed said the most dangerous unsafe driving behavior was passing a school bus with its lights flashing and stop arm extended, more so than speeding, racing, ignoring stop signs/red lights, crossing railroad tracks with red lights blinking, or passing in a no-passing zone.

People lose children for lots of reasons, unfortunately, but tragedies resulting from illegal passing of school busses can be avoided.

Legislative history

2011,2012: S.4062 Referred to Transportation 2009,2010: S.7226 Reported to Codes

Fiscal implications

N/A

Effective date

Effective date shall be the first of November next succeeding the date on which it shall have become a law.