Officials in Chicopee said the school district is the first in the state to have cameras installed on school buses to ensure drivers adhere to the stop sign. The city mayor’s office, superintendent, and police departments made a coordinated effort to employ this technology, following Gov. Maura Healey’s recent state legislation authorizing automated enforcement of stop-arm violations.
Chicopee Superintendent Marcus Ware said there have been some instances where drivers in the city ran the school bus stop sign and students were nearly injured. Ware said 10 buses out of the 74 in the fleet have cameras installed for their pilot program.
"One of the things that the families can be rest assured, that when we are using this technology it is to do everything to prevent and to protect their child, to get to and from school safely and return back home each and every day without incident," Ware said.
He said the district has a grant to cover the pilot program that will start in April and run until June.
The cameras are designed to take a picture of a driver's license plate if they pass the bus stop sign when it's extended. That image goes to the Chicopee police department for review.
“I hear from transportation directors, superintendents and mayors all the time of scary moments, close calls,” Michael Gorman from Bus Patrol, the school bus safety company providing the cameras. “ There was a mom and a daughter hit in Northampton about a year ago. There are stories all over the Commonwealth. And, just by luck, more people haven’t been hit. Cars just don't appropriately stop and that's why this law came to be.”
The Massachusetts Merit Rating Board has recorded 265 violations since Jan. 1, 2026 for drivers allegedly failing to stop for a school bus, according to the state’s Department of Transportation.
"We need to be doing everything we can to keep our children safe,” Governor Maura Healey said in a statement to NEPM. “We all see it way too frequently — cars zooming past stopped school buses and putting students at risk," she said. "That’s why I was proud to sign legislation allowing communities to use stop-arm safety cameras to help deter this behavior and hold people accountable, and it's great to see Chicopee being the first in Massachusetts to take this lifesaving action."
Under Massachusetts law, drivers on either side of the road must stop when a school bus activates its red flashing lights and extends its stop sign. They must remain stopped until the red lights stop flashing and the sign is retracted.
The minimum fine on a first offense is $250 and with up to $2,000 for repeat offenders.