CrossingGuard is strategically placed on the exterior of a school bus to detect and capture stop-arm violations that occur while the school bus stop arm is extended. Installation is free for school districts and 100% violator funded.
American Traffic Solutions (ATS) and AngelTrax recently partnered to create an external school bus camera system, CrossingGuard, which can both capture illegal school bus passing events and process citations automatically.
ATS is a provider of road safety camera solutions and traffic violation management services, while AngelTrax offers mobile surveillance technology for school buses and other industries.
“Since ATS is in the automatic ticketing business, they looked to us for a partner that could offer a system innovative enough to automatically detect violations,” says Richie Howard, president and CEO of AngelTrax.
CrossingGuard is powered by AngelTrax’s IntelliGuard Stop Arm Violation system. The enabling hardware features patent-pending technology that automatically detects stop arm violators that enter the enforced zone from either the rear or oncoming direction while the stop arm is extended.
If a vehicle illegally breaches the enforced zone, CrossingGuard’s camera captures a view of each vehicle and its license plate. This segment of the recording is automatically marked, along with a couple seconds’ window before and after. The footage is then wirelessly transferred via ATS’ private connection directly to Phoenix, where the camera-captured stop-arm violations are processed.
With CrossingGuard’s technology, uploading can occur anywhere — on the road or in the docking station — as long as there is a 3G or 4G wireless network available.
“For most stop-arm cameras on the market, a staff must manually sift through the footage to search for violations, but CrossingGuard does that automatically; every video that comes into Arizona is a violation,” Howard says.
Issuing authorities in Phoenix then review the footage, and a decision is made on whether to send out a citation.