Reports of drivers passing stopped school buses in Sudbury, Ont. down this year

Greater Sudbury police have received 12 complaints so far this year about drivers passing school buses when they are picking up or dropping off children in the northern Ontario city.

Police say they've charged one person so far this year for passing a school bus.

In addition to those complaints, the Sudbury Student Services Consortium, which manages school buses for the region's four school boards, has received 24 reports of drivers illegally passing school buses.

Renée Boucher, the consortium's executive director, said the numbers are an improvement over last year, when they counted 433 such incidents over the entire school year.

"Even one would be too much, but it's still better," she said.

Sgt. Blair Ramsay, with the Greater Sudbury Police Service's traffic management unit, said police see the most issues on busier four-laned roads, where people in the lane furthest from a school bus don't always stop.

"All lanes of traffic have to stop, even if the school buses are in a lane that's, you know, far away from everybody," he said.

Ramsay said drivers need to pay better attention on the road and be on the lookout for school buses, which now have bright LED lights, and strobe lights in some cases, when they are stopped.

"It's very common that they [drivers] didn't see the bus because they were in the lane that was the furthest away from the bus," he said.

In the 2022-2023 school year Sudbury police sent out 238 warning letters and charged 55 drivers for passing stopped school buses.

The fine for illegally passing a school bus is $400, and it also results in six demerit points.

To help report more infractions the Sudbury Student Services Consortium has started to install camera systems on some of its school buses, which can capture a vehicle's licence plate number if it illegally passes a bus.

Boucher said seven of the consortium's 380 school buses currently have the camera systems installed, with six more on the way.

She added she would like all buses to have the cameras, but they are expensive, and they currently need a staff member to manually review the footage they capture, and send any infractions to police.