Alerts

UPDATE March 16, 2019: 2019 legislative session ended without action taken on bill.

UPDATE March 11, 2019: Passed House vote 68 – 0. Sent to Senate where it was referred to Education Committee.

UPDATE February 22, 2019: Scheduled for Transportation Committee hearing on February 28th.

HB 24 was introduced on February 8, 2019 and was referred to the House Transportation & Public Works Committee. The Committee has not yet scheduled a hearing or a vote on the bill.

This bill would require, “. . . monitoring equipment to be mounted on the outside of certain school buses to record motorists illegally passing school buses when they are stopped and have warning lights and the stop arm engaged; increasing the penalty assessment misdemeanor fine for passing a school bus.

The NMA opposes this bill. National evidence shows that school bus transportation is remarkably safe and to the degree that safety incidents affecting school children occur, bus drivers are statistically much more culpable than passing vehicles. Increasing fines is more a money maker — particularly when introducing for-profit camera companies into the process where the devices must issue tickets to earn their keep —  than a deterrent. If New Mexico legislators want to address school bus safety, their focus should be on the more significant safety problem issue of bus driver training/education.