SW Miami-Dade man fights citation for allegedly passing stopped school bus
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY - A Southwest Miami-Dade resident is pushing back after receiving a fine for allegedly passing a stopped school bus. He was ticketed after being caught by one of those new school bus cameras.
CBS News Miami spoke to the man who reached out to us for help.
"I know I didn't do anything wrong," Joe Yap said.
CBS News Miami reporter Joe Gorchow asked him, "Do you feel that you were improperly cited?"
"Oh, yes, of course," Yap added. "I'm going to dispute it.
Yap said the video he showed CBS News Miami, provided by BusPatrol, illustrates what happened on Oct. 4. Yap said he was driving the white Honda Civic as the bus slowed down and came to a stop.
"I was coming this way around 4 o'clock, and then the bus, I noticed the bus here," Yap said. "It wasn't even stopped, and then I passed it."
Yap thought that was the end of it -- until he received a Notice of Violation and a $225 fine in the mail from Miami-Dade Police, citing Florida Statute 316.172.
The statute states that when approaching a school with its stop signal activated, you must stop your vehicle and not pass until the signal is off.
Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles addresses the state law, saying on its website, "Motorists are required to stop when approaching a school bus that is stopped with its red lights flashing and STOP arms extended."
The cameras installed by BusPatrol on all Miami-Dade school buses are designed to detect vehicles that illegally pass stopped school buses.
Rewatching the video from both angles, we see the bus still in motion and not fully stopped, with both the stop sign and arm extended until Yap's car is clear out of frame.
After reviewing the same video, Mark Gold, CEO and founder of The Ticket Clinic, offers his legal opinion on Yap's case.
"I'm not a judge, but if you play that in slow motion, it definitely appears that that vehicle already passed before the arm got extended," said Gold.
CBS News Miami asked BusPatrol about the process for reviewing its camera footage on Miami-Dade school buses before a notice of violation is ultimately issued.
"At BusPatrol, school bus safety is our top priority," a spokesperson said. "Just last week, a tragic accident involving children on a Florida school bus underscored how frequent these incidents are. As part of our industry-leading safety program, we use AI technology backed by three levels of human review to analyze close calls near school buses."
The spokesperson continued: "When our evidence-capturing system flags a potential violation of Florida law, we forward video evidence to the MDPD for further action. Only the MDPD can decide if a citation is issued."
Since the school year began, Miami-Dade Police told us over 78,000 notices of violations have been issued. If nobody contests, that's more than $17.5 million potentially collected.
Gorchow asked: "Do you think you could have done anything differently when you look back at the video?"
Yap responded: "No, I did what I was legally supposed to do. I think it's human error. Because it takes a human to actually validate the video to see if there was a violation done or not."
Yap plans to contest his ticket.
If you get one of these tickets, you have the option, like Yap, to contest it by mail to a processing center in Virginia or waiting to contest it in court locally, which could ultimately cost you more money.
BusPatrol is looking into how many people contested their tickets and how many were dropped.
Miami-Dade Police told CBS News Miami one of the officers must "sign off and confirm" a violation submitted by BusPatrol before issuing the fine.
