SPRINGFIELD -- The Effingham County School District, along with local law enforcement, has welcomed the addition of Bus Patrol and Operation Stop Arm to Effingham County. 

In the United States, more than 10 million school bus stop-arm violations occur daily. This translates to as many as two violations per bus per day across the U.S.

In Effingham County, 124 school buses run 366 routes carrying 7,500 children to and from their homes. Without safety regulations that are effectively enforced, each of these children may be at risk of harm. 

In an effort to protect our children from unnecessary harm, the school district and local law enforcement have implemented the use of the Bus Patrol program, a data collection and video monitoring service that helps identify stop-arm violations.

 The Effingham County School District and the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office have entered an agreement to work collaboratively to achieve the immediate goal of decreasing risk to bus riders by increasing community awareness, implementing smart-bus technology available through the Bus Patrol program  and fully enforcing violations to the stop-arm laws.

 Once a bus is equipped with smart-bus technology, it will be able to effectively record stop-arm violations. The data collected from each of these violations will then be sent to the sheriff’s office for verification.

 For the first offense, the driver will be issued a $250 school bus monitoring citation as well as a photo and video of the violation. The offender then has the right to pay the citation or request a hearing. 

Those who are cited with a second offense will face higher fines as well as points against their license.