Homeland Integrated Security Systems's Cyber Tracker to monitor NY school buses
GPS-plus devices include sensors that monitor everything from internal temperature to vehicle speed; school districts want to avoid another Chowchilla while keeping eyes on their drivers
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Chowchilla, California school bus hijacking, a horriffying event in which twenty-six children were taken to an abandoned quarry and buried while the kidnappers waited to collect a ransom that never came. The students eventually escaped unharmed, but the event remains among the country’s most notorious crimes, and it speaks to the neccesity of products such as Ashville, California-based Homeland Integrated Security Systems’s GPS-enabled Cyber Tracker. The company has recently installed the Cyber Tracker in school buses belonging to the Lake Shore Central School District in Erie County, New York.
Cyber Tracker’s core technology relies on GPS, but this increasingly common feature is supplemented by a range of sensor technology, including those that can monitor the bus’s internal temperature, door sensors, light sensors and a full range of vehicle or machine diagnostics. It can even detect if the driver violates the speed limit or brakes too hard (features that are popular when the device is installed in a teenager’s car). From the school district’s perspective, safety and employee performance are the primary concerns. The GPS is equally good at monitoring a driver who takes excessive detours on his way back from a route as it is in locating a missing bus, and the sensors, which are integrated into the school district’s network, help ensure that maintenance problems are addressed promptly.
“The Cyber Tracker fully integrated with our school district’s existing Nextel communications account, streamlining billing and reducing work for our office staff. Cyber Tracker units are independent from school bus manufacturers, meaning that I am not bound to purchase a certain brand of bus to keep my GPS tracking system standardized,” said Michael P. Dallessandro, Transportation and Grounds Director of the Lake Shore Central School District.
-read more in this comany news release; company Web site
