ALBANY COUNTY — Next to the roar of traffic and the blare of honking horns on Central Avenue in Colonie, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy held a press conference on Monday morning to announce figures he repeatedly called “staggering” — of tickets issued to drivers passing stopped school buses.

“Over 700 buses are being passed on a monthly basis in Colonie,” said South Colonie Superintendent of Schools David Perry.

South Colonie, the first district to sign on to the BusPatrol program supported by the county, has 100 bus drivers and 5,000 students, Perry said, adding, “The school earns zero dollars.”

“It’s staggering …,” said McCoy of the number of violations. “We’ve been dancing with the devil. We’ve been fortunate that no one’s been hurt. No kid’s been hit or, god forbid, killed.”

The Bethlehem Central School District has joined the program and, McCoy reported, for one month in Bethlehem and for the first three months of this year in the South Colonie district, fines have totaled over $700,000. The county gets 40 percent of that, or $280,000.

“It’s not about generating money,” said McCoy. “It’s not about writing tickets. It’s not about making people mad — ’cause I can’t tell you how many people are really pissed off at me they are getting tickets in the mail.”

Rather, McCoy went on, “We’re doing this to save lives and educate people.”

The county has produced brochures to inform drivers they need to stop when a school bus stop arm is extended and its red lights flash, and ads are being placed on CDTA buses.

The ads on the Capital District Transportation Authority buses illustrate how cars traveling in the opposite direction of a stopped bus on a multi-lane highway are still in violation if they don’t stop.

“When school-bus lights are flashing, everyone in all lanes must stop. That’s the law,” said McCoy.

Other education measures include firehouses in Colonie posting signs and the school district including safety messages in its weekly emails home.

According to state law, traffic approaching from either direction must stop for a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing. The first-time penalty for illegally passing a school bus is a $250 to $400 fine, 5 points on the driver’s license, and/or possibly 30 days in jail, according to the state’s Operation Safe Stop, which adds, “Worse yet, the memory of hitting or killing a child may be one you carry for the rest of your life!”

The Operation Safe Stop website says that every school day, 2.3 million children ride school buses statewide and an estimated 50,000 motor vehicles illegally pass New York State school buses every day.

“I hope more schools opt into this … it costs you nothing to do this,” ssid McCoy.

The Guilderland Central School District went live with the program several weeks ago and Berne-Knox-Westerlo has committed to joining the program.

While McCoy did not release numbers for Guilderland at the press conference, Mary Rozak, his spokeswoman, told The Enterprise that, in the three weeks the Guilderland program has been live, 244 violations were recorded on the district’s 44 buses.

Schools that join the BusPatrol program have their buses equipped, for free, with cameras.

 Bus Patrol explains that stop-arm cameras identify illegal passers by license-plate number. Tickets are issued to a vehicle’s registered owner unless the automobile is proven stolen during the time of the offense. If someone other than the vehicle’s owner was driving at the time, the owner can request a transfer of liability.

 The company provides a diagram, detailing an eight-step process, beginning with a camera attached to the outside of the bus being activated when a vehicle passes. The data is sent to servers and processed before being reviewed for violations; an evidence package is then sent to the municipality where the violation occurred. The municipality reviews the evidence and issues a citation. The driver then pays the fine online or by mail.

Ninety-five percent of drivers do not contest their ticket after seeing video evidence of their violation, the company says.

McCoy called the videos “really scary.”

Asked how long the program will run, McCoy said, “This will run till the violations stop … I hope there’s a day we don’t have to do it.”

He concluded of violators, “We don’t want your hard-earned money but we want our children safe.”