No, this isn't about a new customer relations program or keeping angry customers off the bus...You never know when a DeCamp bus may become the vehicle for terrorist activity, and "it's better to be safe than sorry" says owner Gary Pard.
DeCamp is getting beaucoup bucks through a federal grant - more than $100,000 - to install remote control security devices inside each coach's GPS, reports the Montclair Times:
Say a terrorist had a gun to a bus driver’s head, and the vehicle was barreling at 60 mph down eastbound Route 3, headed toward its target: the Lincoln Tunnel.“We could bring it down to 10 mph, and the terrorist could see the driver had nothing to do with it,” said Gary Pard, DeCamp’s vice president of operations.
Well heck, you all remember the bus hijacking in the movie Speed, don't you?
If DeCamp HQ in Montclair is a target - no worries, they'll have it secured like a fortress:
The federal grant will not only be spent on safeguarding the company’s buses, but also on its Greenwood Avenue headquarters, where a “perimeter monitoring system” will be installed for DeCamp’s bus garage and the parking lot across the avenue from it, used by employees during the day and 14 buses during the night.Somewhere between eight and 10 cameras will be situated throughout DeCamp’s property, which measures approximately 60,000 square feet, including that separate parking lot.
Images shot by the cameras will be broadcast into the dispatch center, where dispatchers are present 22 hours per day, Pard said. The cameras will also be recording.
File Under: "Ridiculous."
I agree, ridiculous. DeCamp buses travel too slowly to be of any use to hijackers.