Updated Sept. 23 at 10 a.m.


Approximately 1,100 incidents of motorists failing to stop near a stopped school bus loading or unloading students were recorded during Austin ISD’s first week of school, from Aug. 22-26, AISD Police Chief Eric Mendez said.


Motorists may not be paying attention to their surroundings, Mendez said. In some instances, motorists may have a green light to turn right but are not yielding to pedestrian traffic, he said.


The district predicts that by the end of the 2016-17 school year, there may be more than 6,000 citations handed out, Mendez said.


During a news conference Sept. 1, Mendez and AISD Director of Transportation Kris Hafezizadeh played two videos that revealed two separate incidents of vehicles hitting students crossing a road—one on Aug. 29 and one on Aug. 30.


Both male students, one in middle school and another in high school, were not seriously injured but received bruising and other minor injuries, Mendez said.


“We don’t want a critical incident,” Mendez said. “We don’t want a loss of life or serious injury for our students when they’re going home.”


The two pedestrian incidents, along with the first week of school citations and the 6,600 incidents that occurred between Feb. 8 and Aug. 21, were captured on video through cameras installed on buses. AISD began the camera program in February to deter motorists from driving past a stopped school bus loading or unloading children.


“I’m very happy with the program because it provides us eyes where we don’t have eyes,” Mendez said. “We’re looking at close to 1,200 bus stops across the city for all the grade levels, and obviously there’s not enough police officers at Austin Police Department or Austin ISD Police Department to be at every spot.”


Motorists caught driving by a stopped school bus may receive a citation with a $300 fine in the mail, Hafezizadeh said.


An earlier version of this story stated the district had issued approximately 1,100 citations. The district caught approximately 1,100 drivers on video but had not gone through all of the videos to see which ones warrant citations, according to AISD.