House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022 Regular Session

As we send our children off to school, we hope that their school buses serve as safe havens from a vast array of potential threats. The reality is, however, that the behavior of other drivers and bullying peers can compromise this safety: more than 17 million school bus stop-arm violations occur nationwide each school year and an estimated 10% or more of all student bullying happens on school buses. , Some school districts, such as Warren County School District here in Pennsylvania, have taken up the charge of enhancing student safety both inside and outside the bus by equipping their school buses with internal and external cameras. This should be the norm, rather than the exception, in school bus safety. In order to ensure an overall safer transportation environment, my legislation would require all school buses to include a video monitoring system that at a minimum includes an internal camera positioned so that every seat is visible and either an external camera or an internal camera positioned outward so that the road ahead can be seen. While we cannot protect our children every second of the day, we can stand behind technologies, such as video surveillance, that make bad actors think twice before endangering other students and drivers on the road. Please consider supporting an improvement to public safety by signing on to this proposal.
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Introduced as HB2857