BusPatrol: Technology, Leadership & the Future of School Bus Safety
BusPatrol has become a recognized name in school bus safety. How do you describe your role in the student transportation ecosystem today?
BusPatrol is a mission-driven public safety company. We’re focused on one thing and one thing only: making the ride to and from school safer for all students. We partner with school districts, municipalities, law enforcement, and a number of community stakeholders across the country to reduce illegal school bus passes and make roads safer for kids on their way to and from school.
BusPatrol President & Chief Innovation Officer
The reality is that going to school should be one of the safest things a child does in a day. But statistics show that, for any of us, getting in a vehicle and being on the roadway is one of the most dangerous things we do in a given day. Children are no different.
Our role is to provide communities, at no cost, with the necessary technology to bring 21st-century safety solutions to school buses and create the safest route possible for children. We focus on protecting them from illegal passing of school buses, as well as providing interior technology and safety solutions to make the commute as safe as humanly possible—inside and outside the bus.
Today, our stop-arm safety program operates on more than 40,000 school buses in over 400 communities in North America. Unfortunately, someone illegally passes a school bus about 40 million times a year across the country. For decades, that was largely an invisible problem. People anecdotally understood that cars sometimes pass stopped school buses, but I don’t think they fully appreciated how often it happens.
Too often, safety is measured by asking how many children lose their lives. That’s an unacceptable metric. If the answer is more than one, it’s already too many. More importantly, it underestimates the very real trauma and danger children face every single day from near misses or incidents where a child is struck but not severely injured.
We see it every day at BusPatrol: cars speeding past children at high speeds, creating extremely dangerous environments. There’s not only a physical risk but also lasting emotional trauma. Children are diving out of the way of speeding vehicles and associating going to school with a moment they thought they might be killed. If you talk to a seven-, eight-, nine-, or 10-year-old about an experience like that, you immediately understand how dramatic it was and how it can stay with them for life.
Our role is to help communities deploy the best technology available to reduce and eliminate those interactions while students commute to and from school.
What insights does BusPatrol’s data provide that can help districts improve safety beyond enforcement alone?
Enforcement is just one part of the picture. We provide partners with regular monthly reporting that shows trends over time, so districts can focus on the right locations and times. Some communities request reporting more frequently, and we can provide that as well.
We show them where their hotspots for illegal behavior are, or what intersections or stops are driving the most risk. In many communities, we work hand-in-hand with transportation directors to shine a light on those danger zones and potentially move a stop or adjust the timing of a route. Sometimes shifting a stop by 15 minutes or slightly modifying a route can reduce exposure to heavy traffic patterns.
That reporting makes risk visible and empowers communities to make informed decisions.
Our data also helps bus operators understand where their buses are and when. By providing detailed location and time data, operators can review routes, stop locations, and stop-arm activity. This improves situational awareness, operational planning, and driver training.
For example, the data may show inconsistent stop procedures, unscheduled stops, or route deviations due to road closures. Identifying those patterns allows districts to address issues through coaching and training.
We also provide interior camera insights, which add another layer of safety. While many schools now have interior cameras, school buses historically have had less supervision inside. Drivers do an incredible job, but their primary focus must remain on the road. When you have 30 or 40 children behind you, that’s often the time of day when students have the least direct supervision.
We provide free interior cameras in addition to exterior enforcement cameras. In an emergency, a driver can activate a panic alarm, allowing the school to live-stream video from the bus. From an investigative standpoint, if a complaint arises (say a student reports being pushed or having something taken), the school can review the footage and take appropriate action. It’s another important layer of data and security for students.
School bus safety requires coordination across districts, law enforcement, and policymakers. How does BusPatrol help bring those groups together in a meaningful way?
That’s a really important role we play. School districts and communities are complex, with many stakeholders: school boards, superintendents, transportation directors, PTAs, parents, and students.
When enforcement is involved, you add legislators, mayors, county executives, sheriffs, police departments, clerks of court, and judges. Automated enforcement is always a local decision, and all of those stakeholders must determine how to implement it effectively.
Local governments don’t typically operate in a unified structure across all these entities. There isn’t usually a single body responsible for bringing them all together. BusPatrol serves as a facilitator. We don’t control any entity, and we don’t tell governments what to do. But we create the forum for discussion and alignment.
Each community decides how it wants the program to operate. We work closely with every stakeholder, whether it’s transportation leaders, law enforcement, or courts, to ensure alignment and formal sign-off.
Automated enforcement is not one-size-fits-all. We customize each program so communities can govern themselves in the way that best reflects their values and priorities.
Your recent School Bus Safety Summit brought together leaders from across the safety and transportation landscape. What was the goal of the Summit, and why was it important to include voices like NAPT Executive Director Molly McGee Hewitt on the program?
First, we’re incredibly appreciative of NAPT’s participation. When organizations like NAPT are at the table, it adds credibility to the discussion.
The summit had three goals. First, to create an open forum. Not to push one solution, but to bring together diverse perspectives from transportation, law enforcement, safety organizations, and government. We wanted to ask: What’s working? What’s not? What are the facts? What ideas can help create a safer commute?
Second, to generate additional safety solutions beyond current technology.
Third, to shine a light on the true scope of the issue, well beyond fatalities. A single fatality is unacceptable. Historically, more than 1,200 children have been killed while getting on or off a school bus. But injuries and trauma are far more widespread and underreported.
As the largest provider of stop-arm enforcement solutions, we see this issue at scale. The summit was a call for focus and collaboration. Bringing together 500 leaders from across industries and government in the nation’s capital demonstrated real commitment to addressing this issue annually. That gives me optimism.
Coming out of the Summit, we also partnered with the Governor’s Highway Safety Association (GHSA) to develop the nation’s first National Action Plan for School Bus Safety. This historic call to action outlines 69 recommendations for communities to help make roads safer for students. Importantly, it expands the ecosystem of stakeholders thinking about student transportation safety every day, from State Highway Safety Offices and the court system to post-crash care partners and other community leaders. We’re encouraging both traditional and non-traditional partners to get involved and help implement these recommendations. Communities can download the National Action Plan and start putting these 69 recommendations into action at buspatrol.com/community-advocates.
As you look to the future, what gives you the most optimism about where school bus safety, and the industry as a whole, is headed?
School bus safety is no longer flying under the radar. There’s more work to do, but states and communities are recognizing this as a serious issue.
The National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services conducts an annual stop-arm violation study. For years, estimates hovered around 44–45 million illegal passes annually. This past year marked the first notable drop of about 13 percent to approximately 39 million.
That number is still far too high, but it suggests progress. Dozens of states have passed laws, hundreds of communities have adopted programs, and reductions are appearing in both local and national data.
Policy momentum is also real. A few years ago, only a handful of states allowed automated enforcement. Today, 32 states do, and that number continues to grow.
Seeing collaboration across industries, especially at events like the summit, gives me confidence that we’re moving in the right direction.
BusPatrol is an active business partner of NAPT and a visible supporter of the association’s mission. Why is it important for your organization to engage at the association level, and how do partnerships like this help move the student transportation industry forward?
Partnerships with the transportation community are at the core of what we do. At the heart of every transportation director’s work is keeping children safe, especially during the trip to and from school. That’s the mission of NAPT and its members, and it’s the mission that drives BusPatrol.
We may come from different sides of the ecosystem, but we’re two sides of the same coin. Stop-arm safety only works when transportation leaders, educators, advocates, law enforcement, and the public are aligned.
Partnerships like this help unify that message: When you see a school bus, slow down, pay attention, and protect the children on board. When we work together, we save lives and make the commute to and from school safer for every child.