A new law authorizes county school boards independently or under contract with a vendor to install stop-arm cameras on school buses to capture incidents of illegal passing and use the evidence to issue citations.
The state is also authorized to contract with vendors on behalf of the districts.
Gov. Roy Cooper signed SB 55 on Tuesday to amend existing statutes governing counties and their powers, school district services and motor vehicles. It allows county school districts to install and use automated school bus safety cameras that are clearly marked with warning signs consistent with State Board of Education standards and to create inter-local agreements for cost‑sharing and reimbursements.
If a county school district does employ stop-arm cameras and the local county government adopts an ordinance for civil enforcement in the courts, citations may be issued that include the date and time of the violation, amount of fine and due date, photo evidence of the infraction, and how the vehicle owner can contest the ticket.
A first offense results in a $400 fine, a $750 fine for a second offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense. No points will be added to either the driver’s license or insurance.
Registered owners of violating vehicles will be held responsible unless they can prove another person was driving at the time of the incident.
Existing state law continues to apply to any motorists who strike a person while illegally passing a school bus, and stop-arm video is admissible as evidence in criminal proceedings if the driver is identifiable.
“If for some reason we can’t get a good image of the person or identify that person as such that we can prosecute them, this law allows the county to adopt an ordinance which lets them to find the vehicle owner,” explained Kevin Harrison, the state director of student transportation for the North Carolina Department of Instruction.
“Secondarily,” he said, “it sets up a framework in any county that enacts this ordinance, which gets all of the parties playing nicely together. It gets the transportation department identifying video and passing its to law enforcement, law enforcement reviewing the video and saying whether it’s a violation, and the district attorneys relying on law enforcement’s assessment of whether they should charge someone or issue a civil penalty.”
Depending on prior offenses, the penalty for being found guilty of a Class I felony could range from a warning, probation or community service to up to three to 8 months in jail and a $1,250 fine. A guilty verdict in the case of death resulting from an illegal passing incident carries a penalty of up to four to eight months in jail and a minimum fine of $2,500, in addition to any further criminal charges.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that SB 55 additionally allows county school districts to install stop-arm video cameras and manage the footage with local law enforcement in addition to the county or the state entering a contract with a third-party vendor. It also adds a quote from the Department of Public Instruction explaining the primary reasons for the new law. A previous version of this article also incorrectly stated that stop-arm video is not admissible in criminal proceedings.
