It’s a South Carolina law that’s supposed to help police catch drivers who pass stopped school buses.
Last June Governor Haley signed a bill that lets officers use video from bus-mounted cameras as evidence to ticket drivers.
In August, Horry County School Transportation Director Jim Wright said he the county was looking into putting cameras on dozens of buses in the next budget year, but on Thursday he said the county has no plans for the cameras in the foreseeable future.
“We have no plans to put any cameras on the buses; we would have liked to but, once we got looking into it, the law really didn’t really change much for what the drivers would have to do,” according to Wright.
It is illegal to pass a stopped school bus in all 50 states and South Carolina lawmakers passed legislation in 2014 to allow school bus stop arm camera footage as evidence when citing drivers who don’t stop for school buses.
South Carolina has some of the most stringent traffic laws in the U.S., but that doesn’t necessarily keep people from breaking them.
Last year Wright conducted his own survey that found over 80 violations of people running the stop school bus sign on either yellow or red lights.
Still Wright says, “right now we do not find it to be economically feasible, based on the fact that we have to do all the same things that we’ve been doing prior to the new law being in place, all the new law says is that cameras can be put on there if they wanted to.”
Wright says all future plans for stop arm cameras, which cost around $500 per bus, have been tabled in Horry County.
Even without the cameras, there are still hefty penalties for drivers who illegally pass school buses, including a $1,00 fine and a six point hit on your insurance.
According to the South Carolina Highway Patrol, 16 violators have been ticked since January of 2014.
