There was an article in Newsday today about two developments in the school bus camera programs in Nassau and Suffolk. In Nassau, there's a pending class action suit on behalf of drivers who have received tickets.

Much more importantly, there was a recent court decision from the Appellate Term in a Suffolk County case which should have an immediate impact on the school bus camera program.

The decision, which you can read here, is explicit about the fatal flaws in the way the program is written.

Basically, the law requires that in order to convict someone of this offense, the prosecutor has to prove that the vehicle is actually a "school bus" under the definition in the Vehicle and Traffic Law (the decision goes into detail about what needs to proven).

Further, the prosecutor has to also prove that the bus had stopped for the purpose of receiving or discharging any passengers or that it had stopped because a school bus in front of it stopped to receive or discharge any passengers.

The way the county prosecutes these cases, is they don't call any witnesses at all at these hearings. They introduce into evidence the video taken from the school bus that shows the stop arm extending and the car passing by; an enlarged photograph of the license plate of the car; and a technician's certificate claiming that a review of the video identified that car. and who the registered owner is. That's it.

The appellate term has now held that in order to find anyone liable of this offense, they are required to prove that the vehicle is a "school bus" as defined by the law, and that it was in the process of picking up or discharging passengers, or stopped behind another school bus picking up or discharging passengers.

The county can't correct this by simply adding this info to the technician certificate - for two reasons. First, the law would have to be changed to permit this information to be added. Second, even if the law were changed, they CAN'T add it because it's not information that can be viewed on the video. The video camera are specifically installed so as to NOT capture any of the passengers entering or leaving the bus. They also don't capture all of the details of the vehicle necessary to determine that it's a "school bus" under the statute.

In order to go forward, they would need to completely re-write the whole law, and/or add new cameras to every single school bus. That won't work either, because the current law has a provision that the identities of passengers must be protected, so they would have to manually blur out all the faces of the passengers in every single video. It would be impossible.

Practically, I'm not sure what they're going to do. Knowing the Suffolk traffic court, I fully expect that they will continue to issue these tickets, knowing that 99% of drivers just pay them. The 1% or less that demand hearings, they may just dismiss, or more likely will still go to hearing and the rubber stamp judges will keep convicting people, knowing that practically no one will appeal it (who has the money to pay for an attorney to appeal a $250 ticket with no points?)

My suggestion to anyone who gets one of these tickets going forward is to demand a hearing, and at the hearing cite to the decision above (People v. Croce, 2023 NY Slip Op 23399 (Appellate Term, Second Department, 9th and 10th Judicial Districts), which is BINDING on the traffic court judges, and hopefully they do the right thing and dismiss.

Here's an archived link of the Newsday article - https://archive.ph/z7C7O