Suffolk Signs On to Operation Safe Stop, Vowing Zero Tolerance for Drivers Who Pass School Buses

Drivers who roll past a stopped school bus in Suffolk County this week should not expect a warning, police said Wednesday as the county signed on to Operation Safe Stop, a campaign that pairs extra enforcement with public education across the region.

Ed Romaine, the county executive, and Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina made the announcement at Patchogue's Saxton Middle School. Joining them were county legislators, school district leaders, students and local members of a pupil transportation association's county committee. The campaign coincides with the Oct. 19-23 observance of National School Bus Safety Week.

"This week serves as a reminder that we are going to be out there on the roads, and this will be a zero-tolerance effort by the department," Catalina said in a statement released by the county. "The safety of our students is our priority, and we have to make sure they can get to school and return home safely."

Romaine pointed to the county's broader traffic safety record. "Suffolk County has taken a comprehensive approach in the last few years to make our roads safer and to reduce reckless driving," he said, calling the campaign "a necessary tool to ensure motorists understand the rules of the road and stop for flashing red lights."

The scale of the problem shows up in the county's own camera data. Suffolk's School Bus Safety program, which relies on cameras attached to buses, wrote roughly 83,000 tickets to vehicles passing stopped buses in 2024, figures from the county's traffic and parking violations agency show. The count fell last year to a little over 73,000. Officials said the drop was welcome but that drivers still are not complying often enough.

Statewide, an estimated 50,000 vehicles go around stopped school buses on New York roads each day, the county said, citing state figures.

State traffic law bars passing a school bus while its red lights flash, the signal that children are boarding or getting off, and the rule applies whether a driver is coming toward the bus or approaching from behind. Under the statute, a driver found guilty the first time can be fined $250 to $400, jailed for as long as 30 days, or both. A second within three years raises the fine to between $600 and $750, with as much as 180 days behind bars. For a third or later conviction in that span, the law allows a fine of $750 up to $1,500 and the same 180-day jail ceiling. Every conviction also adds five points to the offender's license record, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Camera tickets work differently. Those notices go to the registered owner, not the person behind the wheel, under a separate state law that lets counties run bus camera programs. The owner owes $250 for a first violation, $275 for a second within 18 months and $300 for each one after that. A camera ticket is not treated as a conviction and stays off the driving record, the law says.

Patrick Harrigan, who leads the Patchogue-Medford schools, said keeping children safe on the way to and from school cannot fall on bus crews alone. "We rely on our dedicated bus drivers and transportation staff to keep them safe, but that responsibility extends to every motorist that we share the road with," he said. "No appointment, no meeting, no destination is more important than the life of a child."

Legislator Dominick Thorne spoke as a parent. "The message today is to slow down and stop at these school buses," he said. "At the end of the day, as a father of a six- and a nine-year-old, I never want to get that call that a tragedy or an incident took place."

Legislator Stephanie Bontempi said younger riders cannot be counted on to read traffic the way adults do. "The reason we have these laws is that young children and teenagers are not as developmentally mature to spot dangers and traffic, or to be able to judge distance and speed," she said. "So it is critical that we abide by these rules."