Chicopee says it will be the first municipality to take advantage of the authority extended last year for cities and towns to deploy cameras to catch people who illegally pass stopped school buses.
City officials plan a press conference next Wednesday to demo what they say will be “Massachusetts’ first citywide school bus stop-arm safety program,” powered by a technology company called BusPatrol.
Gov. Maura Healey signed a bill in January 2025 allowing cities and towns to install monitoring technology on school buses to record vehicles that fail to stop when required, like when a bus is stopped to pick up or drop off students. Chicopee officials said a BusPatrol pilot program in Peabody found that a school bus was illegally passed by another vehicle on average more than three times per day.
BusPatrol says it uses “AI-powered stop-arm camera technology” mounted onto school buses to detect when vehicles illegally pass a bus while its stop sign is extended. The system records video from multiple angles in high definition, which is then submitted to local law enforcement for review, the company said.
BusPatrol said its technology is available without any upfront cost to districts or taxpayers. Instead, the enforcement program is funded through violator-paid fines.
Chicopee Mayor John Vieau, Superintendent Marcus Ware, unnamed state elected officials and representatives from BusPatrol plan to discuss the new technology at an 11 a.m. press conference in the parking lot of Chicopee Comprehensive High School. After remarks, there will be a demonstration of a car causing a violation and how the BusPatrol technology works.
Under the law Healey signed last year, images and video from school bus cameras that do not identify violations must be destroyed within 30 days unless a court orders otherwise.
