You’ve been warned. The next one is real.
Friday, May 1 is the date Duval County school officials will begin mailing $225 citations to owners of vehicles photographed illegally passing stopped school buses outfitted with AI-enhanced camera systems.
After announcing the ticketing program in March, the school district mailed warnings throughout April as tech company BusPatrol America installed cameras on roughly 900 school buses servicing the school system.
The cameras are wired to work when buses’ stop-arms open, recording vehicles that drive past buses stopped to let kids board or get off.
(State law says drivers have to stop when they’re approaching a school bus has its stop arm extended. If the road is divided by a barrier or an unpaved median, traffic headed in the opposite direction of the bus can keep driving but should watch for kids crossing the street.)
Artificial intelligence systems in the cameras target license plates and pictures of the vehicles are forwarded to school district police to verify that the images show a traffic violation, which triggers a citation.
School police reviewed 803 potential citations in the first three weeks of April and approved issuing warnings for 609 of those, according to school district data.
School district records indicate double-digit warnings issued at nine locations in Jacksonville, which included individual blocks on Blanding Boulevard, Edgewood Avenue, Lane Avenue, Beaver Street, Collins Road, Stockton Street and Wilson Boulevard.
Now that the warnings are over, people getting citations will also receive information about how to challenge their tickets, which do not carry points against a driver’s license.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Starting May 1, passing Duval school buses on-camera will cost $225
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
