The Hall County School District is implementing a new camera system on some of its buses to try to crack down on civilians running the buses' stop signs.
The new cameras are being installed on 16 of the county's more-than 200 active buses for the 2025-2026 school year. Each bus is being fitted with one forward-facing, one rear-facing and one artificial-intelligence-powered camera on their left-hand side.
The cameras, using the AI software, are designed to work together to detect when a driver has illegally driven past the bus while its stop sign is out to either pick up or drop off children, an issue that Hall County Schools officials say has been growing in recent years.
Transportation Director for the school district, Clay Hobbs, said he felt last year that the issue had reached a critical point that required action.
"Last year, I would say, was probably one of our worst years for stop arm violations, and we had more than one close call," Hobbs said. "I had a strong feeling that it was time to try to make a move to do what we could to limit the number of violations in order to keep our kids safe."
One driver in particular, Joey Johnston, who drives for several schools in the Flowery Branch area, said he became so concerned with the number of drivers disobeying the stop sign that he began logging the incidents in a journal and sharing his numbers with the school district.
On one August school day, Johnston logged eight such instances, most of which he said were on Spout Springs Road.
"That is unreal. People get in a hurry, going to work or going home, and they just ignore the fact that the school bus is there," Johnston said. "I was just astounded by the numbers that I was seeing, people just disregarding the stop signs whatsoever, and putting our children in danger."
The new camera system comes in the same year that Georgia has implemented new penalties for those who violate a school bus stop sign. The new penalties are a minimum $1,000 fine and 6 points agaist the violator's drivers license. Those 6 points represent an automatic suspension for any driver in Georgia under the age of 21, and would lead to a license suspension for any driver over 21 who had any active points on their license.
Georgia law states that oncoming drivers must stop once a school bus has activated its stop sign. The law applies to any oncoming drivers on a two-lane or undivided roadway. The only exception for oncoming traffic is when on the opposite side of a divided roadway that features a physical barrier between the two directions of traffic like concrete or grass.
It is always illegal for drivers to pass a bus with its stop sign out who are going in the same direction of traffic as the bus, even if there are multiple lanes.
The cameras are designed to send video recordings of any captured violations to the Hall County Sheriff's Office for review. Sergeant Jeremy Cooksey with the sheriff's office's H.E.A.T. and traffic units says if they determine that it was a violation, the citations will then be mailed to the driver.
He said the county did a trial run with the cameras on four buses last year, and he said it proved to be effective at catching violators.
"Within the last two weeks of school, there were approximately 50 violations and 50 citations that were issued," Cooksey said. "We certainly were able to observe a lot more violations through those cameras than if we were out there in our patrol cars observing it firsthand."
Hall County Schools Superintendent Will Schofield said he believes the new system is needed to combat the increase in violations.
"In general, I don't think that schools have any business getting involved in trying to be law enforcers, however, the idea of passing a school bus when the red lights are on is different," Schofield said. "If you pass a school bus with red lights on, there's a real possibility you're going to end the life of a child."
Schofield said if the program proves to be successful in reducing violations, the county could look to expand the cameras to more of its buses in the future.
"Absolutely, we would make the investment," Schofield said. "We will invest in keeping our children safe...so if we start to see a dramatic decrease, even with the painfulness of some people receiving fines, it will be our intention to spend what it takes and put them on every school bus in our district."
Johnston added that he's hopeful the new camera system, coupled with the increased penalties, will finally start to reverse the trend of increasing violations.
"I am hoping that with the amount of violations that we've seen, and once tickets start going out...that people are going to start talking," Johnston said. "We want to reduce the number of people running our stop sign. We want our children to be safe."
To hear more from Hall County Schools and Sheriff's Office officials about the new school bus camera system, click play on the video above.
