St. Albert’s Catholic school district has become the first in Alberta to use radar-linked stop signs to protect its bus-riding students.
Greater St. Albert Catholic School officials demonstrated the operation of the new predictive stop arm systems on its school buses at the Cunningham Transport yard May 3.
Announced April 16, the systems use radar and cameras to tell students when it is safe to cross the street when a bus has its stop-sign arm deployed.
The Student Transportation Association of Alberta gets reports every day of “fly-bys” where drivers zoom past buses that have their stop signs deployed, putting students crossing the street in front of the bus at risk of getting run over, said district transportation supervisor Lauri-Ann Turnbull. While students know to look both ways before crossing, some cars approach too quickly for them to spot.
The school district partnered with the company Safe Fleet to outfit the 30 buses it sends to rural areas with predictive stop arm systems, said Turnbull. They are the first school board in Alberta to deploy the systems, which are also common in the U.S., B.C., and Ontario. The board got the money for the systems from route efficiencies and cash saved from students not busing to school during much of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The systems, which cost several thousand dollars per bus, use radar to detect the speeds of approaching vehicles once a bus’s stop-sign arm is deployed. If a vehicle is travelling too fast to stop in time, speakers under the bus’s bumper say “Stop, do not cross,” to warn students to stay put. Otherwise, the speakers beep three times to indicate that it is safe to cross.
Twin cameras on the bus record any vehicles that pass the bus. Turnbull said the camera footage is only accessible by district transportation officials, who would forward it to police if they spot someone disobeying a bus’s stop sign.
Turnbull said these stop-arm systems would only be used in rural areas, as St. Albert does not allow stop-sign arms to be used.
Alberta Transportation says drivers must stop their cars at least 20 metres away from any bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign deployed on any undivided roadway. Anyone who doesn’t can be fined $567 plus six demerits. (You don’t have to stop if the bus is on the opposite side of a divided roadway.)
Cunningham Transport driver Dave Henry said he typically sees a few drivers ignore his bus’s stop sign every month, to his frustration, adding he sometimes has to honk his horn to warn students about oncoming cars.
“It’s a stop sign. It means stop.”
Henry said he hopes these stop-arm systems would lead to more tickets for stop-sign scofflaws, and said every county bus should come equipped with them.
Morinville peace officer Will Norton said his office gets complaints about fly-bys every week, with a few of them being near-hits. These new camera systems would give officers an unbiased view of an alleged flyby to see if the problem was an errant driver, inattentive student, or an unsafe bus stop.
Turnbull urged drivers to stop their cars whenever they were approaching a bus with its red lights flashing and stop-sign arm extended.
“It’s 30 seconds of their time to save the life of a child.”
