August 14, 2024 • 9 mins
Florida now authorizes local school districts to use cameras on school bus stop-arms to catch drivers violating bus safety. In Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties, those cameras are supplied by a company called BusPatrol. We speak with company executive Steve Randazzo.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird Beyond the News. Students are going back to
school this week across the state of Florida, and Florida
school districts now have the authority to put cameras on
school buses to catch drivers who do things like running
those school bus stop signs and speed in school crossing
areas and things they shouldn't be doing with kids around.
(00:21):
Steve Rondezo is the chief growth Officer with a company
called Bus Patrol. It's supplying those bus stop arm cameras
for Hillsboro County and Miami Dade County school districts, and
he joins us Now and Beyond the News. Steve Rondezo, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
For having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, this has of course just been authorized under a
new law from the Florida legislature. And the camera idea
seems straightforward. You put the camera on the stop arm,
you record the bad drivers, you get that to law
enforcement and they issue tickets. But in real life, how
many complications are there to making all that work?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, you've put it pretty simply, and it's actually not
that much more complicated than that. What we have here
in Florida is something that we've seen adopted in other
states in years past. Bus Patrol is the nation's pop
provider of these.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
School bus stop arm cameras.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We're on about thirty thousand school buses across sixteen states
and really fortunate now to have two very large, significant,
influential partners here in Florida. We expect more to come
as the word gets out around this program.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It's really a true public private partnership because all.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The school district as the state authority to install and
operate the cameras. We know that schools have lots of
competing priorities, obviously educating the kids.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
And so many other issues related to the education of
the kids.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That the school bus it's expected to run on time,
it's expected to have technology.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
That is available for safety.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
The school bus stop arm cameras do require a little
bit more work in terms of getting that video that
captures a car illegally passing a school bus over to
law enforcement that violation, processing that transmission, and then once
law enforcement takes a look at that video, the mailing,
the printing, the postage, the collection of the fines, the
(02:31):
scheduling of folks who want to contest their hearing with
the court, all of those administrative services are the types
of things that bus patrol does on half of the
school district, on behalf of the Sheriff's office in order
to make the program run a little bit more smoothly,
a little bit less admin and labor resource intensive for
(02:55):
those parties. And bus patrol sort of performs this ministerial
service to make sure that it's not too labor or
cost intensive on the school or the shure.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So we do that and then it's a seamless process.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
The violations do get captured by our We have AI.
We were the only provider in the space that uses
true AI for detecting the violation.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Our AA engine her name is Ava, so Ava.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
When the arm is out and red lights are flashing
on the bus and kids are getting on and off,
she starts to scan traffic and when people blow past
that school bus in violation of Florida law, it creates
a video evidence package that gets securely transmitted to law enforcement,
a seamless process for them to go log in to
our portal and make an independent decision.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Only law enforcement can make that decision.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We just sort of prepackage that video evidence and then
we take care of the rest once law enforcement has
made its final decision.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So the AI then determines whether a car has entered
that space, and I guess it creates a three dimensional
model of the space around the buzz where the car
is not supposed to be, and then makes a model
of that, and then it determines whether to send a
photo to law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Then it sounds like more less, So I wouldn't say
it determines because the determination part does still rest with
law enforcement, but it's capturing video recordings of what would
be alleged violations. And then Bus Patrol works with the
sheriff's office. For working with Sheriff Cronister's team in Hillsborough,
(04:37):
we're working down in Miami with the Miami Dade County
Police Department, which is more or less effectively a sheriff's office.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
From an enforcement perspective.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And so we do work with law enforcement to prescreen
that evidence. Not only does AVA take a pass at it,
but we have some quality assurance processors who work for
Bus for Control who sort of pre screen and filter
out the junk in alignment with what the sheriff is
looking to see and enforce.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We call them processing guidelines.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And then after that very rigorous pre screening process, does
it then the actual video there's there's a front facing
video outside the front of the bus, there are side
facing videos, so really that video evans packages several videos
all synced up together. So law enforcement, the experience of
(05:30):
law enforcement, even though they weren't physically there is more
or less replicated or even made better because the law
enforcement just by logging into the bus patrol portal reviewing
the potential violation, has all those different camera views of
the recorded incident. So it's not it's a three it's
three dimensional for sure, but it's it's actual recordings from
(05:54):
from what was a live incident that they get to
see just you know, days after and sometimes even the
day after an incident occurred.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And it totally and also in terms of whatever numbers
you've been able to get as feedback, are you seeing
progress around the country as your cameras are being implemented
in school districts and people are getting caught presumably when
they're not doing the right thing?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Oh, undoubtedly.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I mean, I think the reason why bus patrol is
so often selected by school districts and communities around the
country is that we have a very unique comission. It's
to make the ride to and from school safer for
all kids. And in this space there are We're not
the only provider or vendor, but our model is such
(06:46):
that we believe that when schools do this program, every
child is equally deserving of that safer ride toon from school.
So we equipped the cameras on every single school bus
in the entire fleet. So these are very large scale programs.
Miami Dade nine hundred and fifty buses, Hillsboro eleven hundred buses.
And the reason why I bring that up is not
(07:08):
only about the safety equity for the kids, but to
your point, about the effectiveness of the program. That's the
secret sauce to behavioral change, because we don't want this
to be almost like if you're familiar with red light cameras,
you know they put them on a few intersections. People
eventually memorize where they are and where they're not. We
(07:29):
want to change at the core a driver's sort of
conditioning to when they see a school bus on the street.
It's large, it's yellow, it has red flashing lights, that
has an arm that juts into the road. It's designed
to be the most visibly seen thing on the road.
And we want to create the instinct in drivers in
(07:49):
Hillsboro and Miami and elsewhere that anywhere I see a
yellow school bus that stopped at letting kids on and off,
I have to stop or else I might be held
accountable for that by getting a ticket in the mail.
So the full fleet program is really about driver behavioral
change and that conditioning in driver's minds that it's it's
(08:10):
every bus, it's every kid, and there are no exceptions
to me being able.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
To break the law.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And through that model we have seen a dramatic result
in the recidivism rate. For example, nationally across thirty thousand
buses and these full fleet programs that I alluded to,
over ninety percent of folks who get one ticket in
(08:37):
the mail historically never break the law again. So that's
just about a ten percent repeat defender rate, which is
in automated enforcement. It's the lowest repeat offender rate in
all of automated enforcements. So dramatically positive behavioral change. We
see upwards of a twenty to reduction and violations in
(08:59):
communities that we've served each and every year. So the
results are astounding that when people know that this law
is being enforced is particularly on every bus. People begin
to change their behavior. Not everyone does it right away.
Some people have to learn the hard way by getting
that ticket in the mail. But you really think twice
(09:21):
before doing it again once it starts to hit you in.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
The lawap Well, hopefully people feel invested in the kids
in their community and hopefully that overrides or makes it
not necessary to make the investment in form of paying
a ticket. Steve Rendezzo, Chief Growth Officer with Bus Patrol.
They're the company that is supplying those cameras that are
(09:43):
going on board on stop arms of school buses in
Hillsboro and Miami Dade school districts. Thank you very much
for joining us on beyond the News.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Thank you appreciate us
Gordon Bird Beyond the News. Students are going back to
school this week across the state of Florida, and Florida
school districts now have the authority to put cameras on
school buses to catch drivers who do things like running
those school bus stop signs and speed in school crossing
areas and things they shouldn't be doing with kids around.
(00:21):
Steve Rondezo is the chief growth Officer with a company
called Bus Patrol. It's supplying those bus stop arm cameras
for Hillsboro County and Miami Dade County school districts, and
he joins us Now and Beyond the News. Steve Rondezo, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
For having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, this has of course just been authorized under a
new law from the Florida legislature. And the camera idea
seems straightforward. You put the camera on the stop arm,
you record the bad drivers, you get that to law
enforcement and they issue tickets. But in real life, how
many complications are there to making all that work?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, you've put it pretty simply, and it's actually not
that much more complicated than that. What we have here
in Florida is something that we've seen adopted in other
states in years past. Bus Patrol is the nation's pop
provider of these.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
School bus stop arm cameras.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We're on about thirty thousand school buses across sixteen states
and really fortunate now to have two very large, significant,
influential partners here in Florida. We expect more to come
as the word gets out around this program.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It's really a true public private partnership because all.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The school district as the state authority to install and
operate the cameras. We know that schools have lots of
competing priorities, obviously educating the kids.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
And so many other issues related to the education of
the kids.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That the school bus it's expected to run on time,
it's expected to have technology.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
That is available for safety.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
The school bus stop arm cameras do require a little
bit more work in terms of getting that video that
captures a car illegally passing a school bus over to
law enforcement that violation, processing that transmission, and then once
law enforcement takes a look at that video, the mailing,
the printing, the postage, the collection of the fines, the
(02:31):
scheduling of folks who want to contest their hearing with
the court, all of those administrative services are the types
of things that bus patrol does on half of the
school district, on behalf of the Sheriff's office in order
to make the program run a little bit more smoothly,
a little bit less admin and labor resource intensive for
(02:55):
those parties. And bus patrol sort of performs this ministerial
service to make sure that it's not too labor or
cost intensive on the school or the shure.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So we do that and then it's a seamless process.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
The violations do get captured by our We have AI.
We were the only provider in the space that uses
true AI for detecting the violation.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Our AA engine her name is Ava, so Ava.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
When the arm is out and red lights are flashing
on the bus and kids are getting on and off,
she starts to scan traffic and when people blow past
that school bus in violation of Florida law, it creates
a video evidence package that gets securely transmitted to law enforcement,
a seamless process for them to go log in to
our portal and make an independent decision.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Only law enforcement can make that decision.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We just sort of prepackage that video evidence and then
we take care of the rest once law enforcement has
made its final decision.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So the AI then determines whether a car has entered
that space, and I guess it creates a three dimensional
model of the space around the buzz where the car
is not supposed to be, and then makes a model
of that, and then it determines whether to send a
photo to law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Then it sounds like more less, So I wouldn't say
it determines because the determination part does still rest with
law enforcement, but it's capturing video recordings of what would
be alleged violations. And then Bus Patrol works with the
sheriff's office. For working with Sheriff Cronister's team in Hillsborough,
(04:37):
we're working down in Miami with the Miami Dade County
Police Department, which is more or less effectively a sheriff's office.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
From an enforcement perspective.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And so we do work with law enforcement to prescreen
that evidence. Not only does AVA take a pass at it,
but we have some quality assurance processors who work for
Bus for Control who sort of pre screen and filter
out the junk in alignment with what the sheriff is
looking to see and enforce.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We call them processing guidelines.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And then after that very rigorous pre screening process, does
it then the actual video there's there's a front facing
video outside the front of the bus, there are side
facing videos, so really that video evans packages several videos
all synced up together. So law enforcement, the experience of
(05:30):
law enforcement, even though they weren't physically there is more
or less replicated or even made better because the law
enforcement just by logging into the bus patrol portal reviewing
the potential violation, has all those different camera views of
the recorded incident. So it's not it's a three it's
three dimensional for sure, but it's it's actual recordings from
(05:54):
from what was a live incident that they get to
see just you know, days after and sometimes even the
day after an incident occurred.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And it totally and also in terms of whatever numbers
you've been able to get as feedback, are you seeing
progress around the country as your cameras are being implemented
in school districts and people are getting caught presumably when
they're not doing the right thing?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Oh, undoubtedly.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I mean, I think the reason why bus patrol is
so often selected by school districts and communities around the
country is that we have a very unique comission. It's
to make the ride to and from school safer for
all kids. And in this space there are We're not
the only provider or vendor, but our model is such
(06:46):
that we believe that when schools do this program, every
child is equally deserving of that safer ride toon from school.
So we equipped the cameras on every single school bus
in the entire fleet. So these are very large scale programs.
Miami Dade nine hundred and fifty buses, Hillsboro eleven hundred buses.
And the reason why I bring that up is not
(07:08):
only about the safety equity for the kids, but to
your point, about the effectiveness of the program. That's the
secret sauce to behavioral change, because we don't want this
to be almost like if you're familiar with red light cameras,
you know they put them on a few intersections. People
eventually memorize where they are and where they're not. We
(07:29):
want to change at the core a driver's sort of
conditioning to when they see a school bus on the street.
It's large, it's yellow, it has red flashing lights, that
has an arm that juts into the road. It's designed
to be the most visibly seen thing on the road.
And we want to create the instinct in drivers in
(07:49):
Hillsboro and Miami and elsewhere that anywhere I see a
yellow school bus that stopped at letting kids on and off,
I have to stop or else I might be held
accountable for that by getting a ticket in the mail.
So the full fleet program is really about driver behavioral
change and that conditioning in driver's minds that it's it's
(08:10):
every bus, it's every kid, and there are no exceptions
to me being able.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
To break the law.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And through that model we have seen a dramatic result
in the recidivism rate. For example, nationally across thirty thousand
buses and these full fleet programs that I alluded to,
over ninety percent of folks who get one ticket in
(08:37):
the mail historically never break the law again. So that's
just about a ten percent repeat defender rate, which is
in automated enforcement. It's the lowest repeat offender rate in
all of automated enforcements. So dramatically positive behavioral change. We
see upwards of a twenty to reduction and violations in
(08:59):
communities that we've served each and every year. So the
results are astounding that when people know that this law
is being enforced is particularly on every bus. People begin
to change their behavior. Not everyone does it right away.
Some people have to learn the hard way by getting
that ticket in the mail. But you really think twice
(09:21):
before doing it again once it starts to hit you in.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
The lawap Well, hopefully people feel invested in the kids
in their community and hopefully that overrides or makes it
not necessary to make the investment in form of paying
a ticket. Steve Rendezzo, Chief Growth Officer with Bus Patrol.
They're the company that is supplying those cameras that are
(09:43):
going on board on stop arms of school buses in
Hillsboro and Miami Dade school districts. Thank you very much
for joining us on beyond the News.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Thank you appreciate us
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