**School's Open: Drive Carefully** As area students return…

**School's Open: Drive Carefully**

As area students return to school, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office wants to ensure a safe and smooth transition for everyone.

It's important to take proper safety precautions to guarantee a secure school year for all. School buses will be picking up children, and kids on bikes will be hurrying to get to school before the bell rings. Parents will also be dropping off their kids before heading to work.

With this in mind, drivers should take the opportunity to refresh their knowledge with some back-to-school driving tips:

* Obey all speed limits* Buckle up! Use seat belts and safety seats.* Don’t make U-turns.* Be crosswalk aware. Watch out for pedestrians crossing.* Do not block traffic by stopping in the middle of the street to load or unload students.* Obey all curb markings.* Do not stop across the street from the school. This encourages children to run across the street through traffic.* When a school bus stops and flashes its red lights, traffic approaching from either direction must stop before reaching the bus:On a two-lane roadOn multi-lane highwaysOn divided highways

YELLOW LIGHTS FLASHING- This means the bus is going to stop. SLOW DOWN and DO NOT ACCELERATE TO GET PAST IT

RED LIGHTS FLASHING-This means students are getting on or off the bus. STOP YOUR VEHICLE

Participating Oneida County School Districts also have busses equipped with Vera Mobility Camera Systems. Verra Mobility’s CrossingGuard™ school bus stop-arm enforcement solution provides state-of-the-art stop-arm safety technology to effectively capture stop-arm events. When the stop arm is deployed, the camera automatically detects vehicles that pass the stopped bus within the enforcement zone. When an event occurs, the cameras record video of the vehicle and capture event images including the vehicle, its license plate, and the extended stop-arm. The violation video and license plate images are then reviewed by the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office for approval prior to a warning or citation being issued, if a citation is issued it will originate from the state of Arizona.

Surveys conducted by the New York Association for Pupil Transportation (NYAPT) in partnership with the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee (GTSC) show that approximately 50,000 motorists illegally pass school buses statewide each school day.