S AI or adaptive


learning programs already enhance stop-arm


enforcement, coach drivers behind the wheel and rework bus routes. Camera


manufacturers say the technology could also


prevent incidents by predicting on- board behavior of students and transportation staff


Written by Amanda Pampuro


ometimes a split-second’s notice is all it takes to stop someone from getting hurt. Video cameras have long been able to capture the past. Now, artificial intelligence is enabling cameras to provide real time feedback with the


hope of preventing near-future incidents. Gatekeeper’s Doug Dyment, the company founder, president and CEO, re-


called the first video system that he installed on a school bus in 1992. “AI has enormous capability to enhance safety,” he commented. Advances in commercial transportation and stop-arm cameras are sup-


porting innovations in driver and passenger-orientated cameras, route risk management, and targeted training. While the technology continues to de- velop, many camera manufacturers say they’re really improving on existing concepts. “AI is a fancy word,” said Tom Nyberg, vice president of product manage-


ment at Safe Fleet. “This is basically automating known patterns, typically starting from defining the pattern to recognize.” The AI-enhanced software working with a stop-arm camera recognizes


that when motorists near school bus stops speed up, they often end up run- ning through the stop sign, putting students at risk. Safe Fleet’s latest predictive stop-arm camera was nearly a decade in the making, beginning with the company’s 2016 acquisition of Transpec and Specialty Manufacturing, which are credited with manufacturing the first bus stop arms in the 1970s. By 2019, Safe Fleet had incorporated a proprietary AI program to automat-


ically detect stop-arm violations in real time. The company added an audio alert feature to warn students when cars are about to pass into the danger zone. The announcement of “Do not cross,” has had the added benefit of reaching many drivers as well. “When we launched that, we thought it would be to warn the students to step back, and it does,” Nyberg said. “An unintended feature was that the loudspeaker often is loud enough that the motorist hears it, and we’ve seen footage where the motorist might be looking at their phone, or they’re in a daydream, and they actually stop and slam on the brake because they hear the loud sound.” Safe Fleet, acquired by Clarience Technologies last year, is one of many


manufacturers looking to leverage AI to further improve bus technology. Last month, Pro-Vision announced its second-generation AI stop arm cam- era that extracts license plate numbers from captured images. A company spokesperson explained that the camera uses “computer vision,” a specific type of AI that learns to “see” and automatically recognizes target images. Herbert Byrd, assistant director of student transportation for Chesapeake


Public Schools in Virginia, said the number of citations caught by the AI-powered stop-arm cameras on his fleet is “scary when you think about it.” Each day, Chesapeake moves 40,000 students on 593 school buses, which


have been outfitted with BusPatrol’s AI-powered stop-arm cameras since 2020. The camera program cost the district nothing to install, since BusPatrol collects payment from stop-arm citations issued. Before the change in Virginia law that allowed law enforcement to issue


citations to motorists caught on stop-arm cameras, Byrd said his district was Continued on pg. 32 ➥


28 School Transportation News • MAY 2025


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